*    xY 


THE   ROAD   TO   DAMASCUS 


.   OP  CALIF.   LIBBABY.   LOS  AW5ELES 


THE  ROAD  TO 
DAMASCUS 

A  NOVEL 

BY 
H.  A.  MITCHELL  KEAYS 

Author    of   "He   That   Eateth    Bread    with   Me," 
"  The  Work  of   Our  Hands,"  etc. 


BOSTON 
SMALL,  MAYNARD  &  COMPANY 

1907 


Copyright,  1907 

By  Small,  Maynard  $  Company 
Incorporated 


Pressworlc  by  The  University  Press,  Cambridge,  U.S.A. 


TO 

MY  SONS 
E.  M.  Kv  H.  E.  K.,  P.  H.  K. 


21 ~ OR 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

CHAPTER  I 

Curious !  —  how  marriage  affected  a  man. 
Two  years,  and  he,  Tim  Homf rey  —  he  pulled 
out  his  watch  —  it  was  six  o'clock  —  an  hour 
since  he  had  left  her. 

He  was  very  tired ;  in  the  turmoil  of  the  last 
week  he  had  had  no  chance  for  rest ;  with  a  sigh 
of  relief  he  leaned  back,  and  let  himself  listen 
to  the  thoughts  which  jostled  each  other  in  his 
brain,  in  odd  unison  with  the  uneven  movement 
of  the  wheels  beneath  him. 

It  interested  him  to  feel  that  he  was  still 
tingling  with  the  sense  of  elation  which  had 
taken  such  buoyant  possession  of  him  in  the  mo- 
ment when  the  legal  firm  of  which  he  was  a  mem- 
ber, with  an  influence  disproportionate  to  his 
place  in  the  line,  had  united  upon  him  as  the 
one  of  them  all  best  fitted  to  discover  some  evi- 
dence of  paramount  importance  to  a  distin- 
guished client  —  evidence  concealed  in  the  un- 
1 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

sophisticated  but  stubborn  breasts  of  a  pair  of 
Hungarian  peasants,  who,  though  man  and  wife, 
had  not  spoken  to  each  other  for  thirty  years. 

"  I  don't  envy  you  your  job,"  Dawson,  the 
senior  member,  had  said  to  him.  "  Ten  to  one, 
out  of  pure  cussedness,  they'll  unite  now  in  si- 
lence against  you.  Silence  appears  to  be  their 
chosen  form  of  dissipation." 

Homfrey  remembered  that  he  had  smiled  at 
that.  He  had  an  easy  love  for  humanity  which 
rendered  all  experience  alluring ;  the  fascination 
of  planning  how  to  besiege  the  secrets  guarded 
by  such  grim  custodians  appealed  strongly  to 
his  sense  of  humour.  To  be  sure,  the  language 
might  prove  a  bar  to  the  best  effects,  but  he  did 
not  premeditate  failure  —  it  was  not  his  habit. 
In  six  weeks  he  would  be  at  home  again  with 
the  desired  information  in  his  possession. 

Yet  his  sense  of  elation  in  this  affair  was, 
after  all,  only  an  under-current,  for  even  now, 
finally  settled  as  he  was  in  the  train  started  on 
its  long  run  eastward,  his  mind  was  busier  with 
an  exclusively  personal  problem  than,  with  the 
one  towards  which  he  journeyed. 

He  would  send  her  a  good-night  telegram. 

But  words  were  perverse ;  twist  them  as  he 
would,  there  was  no  way  of  giving  subtle -expres- 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

sion,  through  so  public  a  medium,  to  the  one 
thing  he  wanted  to  say  —  the  one  thing  that, 
had  she  been  near,  a  look  would  have  sufficed  to 
reveal. 

Yet  for  the  moment,  he  allowed  his  attention 
to  be  diverted  from  the  blank  on  his  knee.  A 
pretty  woman  came  into  the  car,  and  posed  her- 
self in  the  seat  across  the  aisle  with  a  covert 
attentiveness  to  effective  detail  which  interested 
him  —  the  Eternal  Feminine,  conscious  of  the 
proximity  of  Man,  betrayed  itself  in  every  turn 
of  her  head.  In  due  time  he  restored  to  her 
the  magazine  which  fell  almost  at  his  feet,  an 
accident  so  fortuitous  that  it  might  have  seemed 
the  result  of  design,  but  for  the  lady's  admir- 
ably supported  indifference  to  the  catastrophe. 

Opportunity  enticed,  but  he  sustained  himself 
resistant  to  it,  with  a  dignified  consciousness  of 
his  devotion  to  Richarda. 

What  mysticism  of  passion  there  had  been  in 
her  refusing  to  take  this  trip  with  him !  Be- 
cause, since  their  marriage,  they  had  never  been 
separated,  she  chose  now  this  experience  of  be- 
ing left  without  him  —  that  she  might  know  the 
utter  torment  of  it. 

It  was  a  strange  thing  —  the  love  of  a 
woman ! 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

And  moved  by  a  sudden  impulse  which  ren- 
dered him  defiant  of  the  publicity  of  the  com- 
mon wire,  he  transformed  with  a  few  strokes  the 
unmeaning  bit  of  paper  into  a  thing  charged 
with  human  emotion;  he  wrote  boldly:  I  love 
you. 

Late  that  night  his  message  reached  Richarda. 
She  read  it ;  then  sat  for  an  hour  with  it  tight 
clasped  in  her  hand;  when,  at  last,  she  slept, 
it  was  with  the  dear  touch  of  it  still  close  to  her. 

How  could  the  days  pass  without  Tim? 

But  they  did  pass,  and  in  the  dread  loneliness 
of  them,  Richarda  realized  that  since  her  mar- 
riage her  life  had  centred  around  two  daily 
events  —  the  events  of  her  husband's  leaving  his 
home  in  the  morning,  and  of  his  return  to  it  at 
night. 

Tim !  —  it  was  for  her  the  master  note,  to 
which  all  chords  were  attuned.  Life  and  Death 
—  God,  Eternity ;  such  vast  terms  had  no  sig- 
nificance in  her  ears  save  as  they  touched  her 
through  him. 


He  had  been  gone  a  month ;  she  was  no  longer 

writing  to  him;  it  was  too  near  the  time  of  his 

return.     That  was  a  deprivation ;  the  making  of 

her  letters  had  been  a  species  of  sacrament.     She 

4 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

had  spent  hours  over  a  single  phrase,  only  to 
realize  after  the  letter  was  posted,  that  for  lack 
of  a  single  word  it  failed  entirely  to  convey  that 
suggestion  of  the  ardent  depths  in  her  heart, 
which  she  had  supposed  it  ingeniously  con- 
structed to  reveal. 

But  now  she  was  waiting  for  him,  with  a  light 
in  her  eyes  that  was  new  since  his  going. 

He  would  come  back  to  her  —  he  would  meet 
her  —  would  look  into  her  face,  not  knowing 
what  wonderful  thing  had  befallen  her.  For 
she  had  begun  to  dream  those  dreams  of  which 
the  mother-heart  makes  to  itself  romance. 

The  pansies  in  her  garden  were  still  blooming, 
despite  the  chill  of  December's  snows  upon  them. 
And  as  she  looked  at  them,  she  thought  what  a 
beautiful  world  it  was  —  this  happy,  happy 
world  in  which  she  and  Tim  had  found  each 
other. 


CHAPTER  II 

Mrs.  Homfrey  stood,  reluctant,  upon  the 
threshold  of  her  little  sitting-room. 

"  You  wished  to  see  me  ?  "  she  asked  imper- 
sonally; she  resented  the  message  which  had 
seemed  to  compel  her  to  an  interview  with  a 
stranger. 

"  Yes  Ma'am." 

"Well?" 

"  You  see,  it's  like  this,  Mrs.  Homfrey.  I 
don't  know  just  how  —  why,  it's  kind  of  hard 
to  begin." 

"  I  can  hardly  help  you,  I  fear,  as  I  have  no 
idea  — " 

"  No.  I  guess  likely  you  haven't."  The 
girl's  manner  was  brusque  to  the  point  of  im- 
pertinence, but  she  was  not  conscious  of  that  — 
she  was  frightened.  But  she  was  determined. 

"  Perhaps  you  would  like  to  come  again  some 
other  day,  when  you  know  just  what  it  is  that 
you  wish  to  say."  Richarda  was  distinctly  an- 
noyed. 

6 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

"  No."  There  was  a  passion  of  decision  in 
the  tone.  "  You  don't  know  me,  Mrs.  Homfrey, 
but  I've  found  out  lots  about  you." 

"  Indeed !  "  Richarda  stepped  back ;  the  girl 
stepped  forward. 

"  You're  real  proud.  Anybody  can  see  that. 
But  you're  kinder  than  you  look.  Belle  Austin 
told  me  that.  She  lived  with  you  six  months 
—  when  you  were  first  married." 

"  You  want  help  of  some  sort?  " 

"  Yes.  I  do  want  help.  But  not  any  sort 
that  you'd  be  likely  to  mean." 

Richarda  resigned  herself,  but  she  did  not  ask 
her  visitor  to  take  a  seat ;  they  both  remained 
standing. 

But  the  girl's  hard  black  eyes  softened. 
"  P'raps  you  won't  think  it's  very  nice  —  what 
I'm  going  to  say.  But  I  can't  help  that.  It's 
done,  you  see." 

"Yes?"  said  Richarda. 

"  I  guess  you'd  better  know  my  name  first  — 
it's  Minnie  —  Minnie  Barstow.  I'm  only  twen- 
ty-two now.  That's  young,  isn't  it  ?  —  to  have 
a  boy  of  four." 

"  Yes."  Another  look  came  into  Richarda's 
eyes. 

"  You  see  —  I  was  barely  eighteen  when  he 
7 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

was  born.  That  wasn't  a  very  good  thing  for 
me.  There's  so  many  things  girls  don't  under- 
stand until  it's  too  late.  It's  all  a  good  time 
and  excitement,  and  then  —  !  Well,  I  was 
lucky  anyway.  I  had  a  friend  who  was  nurse 
in  a  kind  of  refuge  hospital.  She  fixed  things 
for  me  and  afterwards  she  wanted  me  to  let  the 
baby  be  adopted.  Some  way  I  couldn't.  But 
my  folks  never  knew.  Myra  found  a  place  for 
him  in  the  country,  and  I  got  a  situation  in  one 
of  the  big  stores  —  I'm  head  of  my  department 
now  —  and  that's  it,  you  see  — "  she  was  speak- 
ing rapidly,  her  pale  face  flushed  — "  the 
trouble  is  now  that  nobody  knows  anything 
about  me  that  isn't  to  my  credit,  except  Myra, 
and  she'll  never  tell.  Myra  knows  I  always  was 
a  good  girl,  except  just  —  and  then  —  I 
couldn't  help  myself.  You'd  understand  that, 
Mrs.  Homfrey.  Nobody  else  could  so  well." 

"  7  understand?  " 

"  Yes,  you  would.  It  wasn't  my  fault. 
There's  some  things  no  girl  can  stand  up 
against,  and  those  that  say  they  can,  don't 
know  —  they've  never  been  tried.  It  isn't  easy 
to  be  only  seventeen,  and  to  have  some  things 
come  your  way.  Oh,  I've  been  hard  enough  on 
myself,  God  knows,  but  there's  another  side. 
8 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

And  now  that  I've  got  this  good  chance  to  get 
married  —  he's  head  of  his  department  too  and 
the  straightest  kind  of  man,  and  he  thinks  I'm 
just  everything — Oh,  everything  that  I  wish  I 
was,  Mrs.  Homf  rey  " —  there  was  the  hint  of 
tears  in  the  girl's  voice — "  Well,  don't  you  see? 
—  he'd  never  marry  me  if  he  knew.  But  I'm 
not  a  bad  woman.  I  know  I'm  better  than  lots 
of  girls  who  might  never  do  what  I  did,  and 
I'd  like  to  tell  him  the  truth,  but  I  can't.  He'd 
never  look  at  me  again.  And  yet  I'd  be  just 
the  same  girl  he's  so  wild  over  now.  I  tell  you 
there  isn't  much  of  some  things  in  a  man's  love 
that's  just  what  means  love  to  a  woman.  Why, 
if  I  knew  anything  like  that  about  him,  do  you 
think  I  couldn't  forgive  him?  " 

"  Sit  down,"  said  Richarda  kindly.  She  won- 
dered still  why  this  story  had  been  brought  to 
her,  but  she  was  not  able  to  resist  its  appeal  to 
her  sympathy. 

"  All  I'd  want  to  know  of  him,"  continued 
the  girl  wearily,  "  would  be  —  did  he  love  me 
now?  Don't  you  think  that's  all  that  really 
matters  ?  "  She  looked  wistfully  at  Richarda. 

"  Yes  —  in  a  way.  But  I  wish  you  could  be 
honest  with  him." 

The  hard  look  came  back  into  the  girl's  face. 
9 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

"  It's  wasting  time  wishing  that,"  she  said  drily. 
"  I  can't  be.  All  that  I  can  do  now  is  to  do 
the  best  I  know  how  for  my  little  boy." 

"  Ah  yes !  —  the  little  boy." 

"  And  that  means  this,  Mrs.  Homfrey."  The 
girl's  excitement  rose  again  —  she  stood  up. 
"  My  little  boy  has  been  a  misery  to  me,  but 
he's  just  the  cutest  thing.  He  isn't  a  bit  like 
me  —  not  a  bit."  She  looked  curiously  at 
Richarda.  "  He's  the  image  of  his  father." 

"  I  should  think  you  would  hate  that." 
Richarda  felt  repulsed  by  what  she  took  to  be 
an  evidence  of  strange  hardihood  in  the  girl. 

"  No.  I  love  it."  There  was 'infinite  pathos 
in  the  simple  statement;  Richarda  was  quick  to 
feel  that. 

"  Whenever  I  see  my  little  boy  I  understand 
how  it  all  happened.  He's  here,  and  he's  so 
sweet  that  when  I  look  at  him  I  don't  see  why 
it  need  make  any  difference  how  he  got  here. 
Marriage  is  a  mighty  funny  thing,  if  you  be- 
gin to  think  about  it.  It  always  seems  to  me 
that  it  whitewashes  some  things  that  are  sights 
uglier  than  anything  I  ever  did.  It  makes  me 
mad  thinking  about  it.  And  yet  I'm  going  to 
get  married,  and  I've  got  to  let  my  little  boy 
go.  There's  no  other  way  to  make  Bert  happy." 
10 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

Richarda  drew  a  long  breath.  "  You  would 
part  with  your  little  child  ?  —  how  can  you  do 
that  —  for  this  man?  " 

"  I  don't  know.  You  wouldn't  think  I  could, 
would  you?  But  I  can."  She  looked  at  Ri- 
charda in  sudden  defiance.  "  After  all,  if  you're 
honest  —  when  you  come  down  to  it  —  nothing 
counts  with  a  woman  but  the  man." 

"  My  poor  girl !  "  exclaimed  Richarda,  moved 
to  compassion  by  impulses  she  had  no  time  to 
analyze. 

Minnie  Barstow's  eyes  filled  with  tears,  but 
she  brushed  them  roughly  away.  "  I  wish  I'd 
been  made  different  in  the  beginning,"  she  said 
unsteadily.  "  But  I  wasn't.  And  wishing's 
wasting,  you  know.  All  I  can  do  now  for  my 
little  boy  is  to  make  things  as  good  as  I  can 
for  him.  And  then  let  them  be.  That's  why 
I've  come  to  you."  She  paused  abruptly,  then 
added  in  a  gathered  passion  of  determination: 
"  I  want  you  to  take  him,  Mrs.  Homfrey,  and 
bring  him  up  for  me.  Then  he'll  never  need 
to  be  sorry  he  was  born,  and  he'll  never  miss 
me.  Belle  Austin  said  you  had  the  kindest  heart 
that  beat." 

Richarda  rose  with  dignity.  "  My  good 
girl,"  she  said  patiently,  "  I'm  very  sorry  for 
11 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

you  —  I  can  appreciate  the  difficulties  that  be- 
set you  —  but  really  —  to  ask  me  to  take  your 
child—!" 

"  But  you  will  take  him.  From  the  minute 
I  first  thought  of  it,  I've  always  known  you 
would." 

Such  calmness  of  presumption  was  both  pa- 
thetic and  ludicrous. 

"  Then  you  are  most  unhappily  mistaken.  It 
does  not  occur  to  you,  I  suppose,  that  such  a 
demand  could  only  be  justified  by  your  having 
some  very  strong  claim  upon  me." 

"  I  have  the  claim." 

The  colour  rose  in  Richarda's  face.  "  A 
claim  on  me  —  that  could  justify  such  a  request 
as  that?  " 

"  Yes." 

For  a  moment  Richarda  was  tempted  to  laugh, 
but  this  was  no  laughing  matter  after  all.  Such 
nonsense  was  not  to  be  endured  —  she  made  a 
movement  towards  the  door. 

"  Wait !  "  said  the  girl. 

Richarda  waited,  but  Minnie  Barstow  hesi- 
tated. "  It's  kind  of  hard  to  tell  you,"  she  fal- 
tered. "  My  child  is  your  husband's  child,  Mrs. 
Homfrey." 

Then,  as  if  she  thought  her  mission  accom- 
12 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

plished,  she  sat  down.  But  the  next  moment 
she  stood  up.  "  I'm  sorry,"  she  began  — 

"  Sorry  !  "  Richarda  took  the  word  from  her 
even  while  she  wondered  how  a  poor  creature 
came  to  be  driven  to  such  a  pass  as  this.  "  If 
you  were  sorry  for  anything,  you  would  not  say 
things  like  that.  You  must  go  now.  I  cannot 
have  you  here  a  moment  longer." 

But  the  girl  stood  back.  "  I  can't  go  yet. 
Because  what  I  have  said  is  true.  Your  hus- 
band—" 

"  Do  not  speak  of  him."  There  was  a  dan- 
gerous light  in  Richarda's  eyes. 

But  Minnie  Barstow  was  not  daunted. 
"  Your  husband  is  away.  I  know  that.  Would 
you  like  me  to  wait  until  he  gets  home  and  then 
come  here  and  ask  him  before  you  to  deny  that 
I  might  be  the  mother  of  his  child?  Or  shall 
I  go  to  see  him  without  letting  you  know  any- 
thing about  it?  — would  you  like  that?  " 

Richarda  looked  at  the  girl  in  a  dazed  way. 
Just  to  hear  such  things  said  filled  one  with  a 
senseless  fear.  But  when  she  spoke  her  voice 
was  calm.  "  Yes.  He  will  be  at  home  very 
soon.  I  should  like  you  to  come  here  then." 

"  Very  well."  Minnie  Barstow  turned  to  the 
door.  And  that  terrified  Richarda  more  than 
13 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

anything  else  she  could  have  done  —  she  did  not 
understand  why.  Something  dreadful  was  hap- 
pening, but  it  did  not  concern  her  —  it  con- 
cerned that  girl.  She  herself  was  quite  calm  — 
she  was  not  afraid  of  anything. 

But  she  had  grown  white  to  her  lips.  Some- 
where, something  was  saying  that  things  like 
this  were  sometimes  —  true?  No,  they  were 
lies,  hideous  black  lies. 

If  only  Tim  were  here !  —  lie  would  know 
what  to  do  with  this  girl. 

At  the  door  Minnie  Barstow  looked  back ; 
she  hesitated  as  if  she  had  something  more  to 
say.  But  Richarda  gave  her  no  chance. 

"  Come  here !  "  she  said  in  a  sudden  blaze  of 
anger  — "  Come  here,  and  tell  me  that  you  are 
never  going  to  say  that  wicked  thing  again. 
Tell  me  that  it  was  a  lie  —  you  know  it  was." 

Minnie  Barstow's  sharp  face  softened.  "  You 
poor  woman,  I'm  real  sorry  for  you.  I  wish 
I  hadn't  had  to  tell  you.  Now,  see  here  — "  she 
spoke  as  if  soothing  a  fractious  child  — "  just 
you  listen  to  me,  and  you'll  know  for  yourself 
it's  true.  I  don't  want  to  make  any  fuss  about 
it.  And  you  don't.  'Tisn't  good  for  either  of 
us.  Maybe  you're  thinking  your  husband  was 
real  bad.  He  wasn't  —  any  more  than  I  was. 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

He  never  knew  there  was  a  child.  Mercy  no ! 
It  seems  funny  it  could  happen  so,  but  it  did. 
That  was  five  years  ago  —  it  was  his  last  year 
in  college.  It  was  all  such  a  rush  at  the  last. 
He  said  he'd  write  me,  but  after  he  was  gone  I 
remembered  that  I'd  never  got  his  address.  And 
then  father  sent  me  to  the  city  —  to  a  place  in 
a  store  —  our  house  was  full  of  girls  growing 
up  —  he  wasn't  afraid  to  let  me  go  because 
Myra  had  written  that  she'd  look  after  me. 
And  she  did !  She  stood  by  me.  She  wanted  to 
try  to  find  him.  But  I  wouldn't  let  her.  I  was 
too  mad  then.  Can't  you  understand  that?  " 

Richarda  made  no  answer. 

"  I  only  wanted  to  be  let  alone,"  the  girl  went 
on  in  the  deeper  voice  of  remembrance.  "  I  was 
miserable.  After  I  was  well  again  I  went  back 
to  the  store.  And  last  spring  I  was  transfer- 
red here  —  and  one  day,  on  the  street,  I  saw  — 
him.  Then  I  found  out  —  about  you." 

And  still  Richarda  said  nothing.  She  was 
looking  out  of  the  window;  she  could  see  the 
pansies,  blooming  bravely  purple  in  the  snow 
which  had  begun  to  fall  again.  She  was  think- 
ing that  once,  long  ago,  in  barbarous  times, 
men  had  been  pressed  to  death  beneath  cruel 
weights.  She  wondered  dully  if  it  had  felt  like 
this. 

15 


Her  silence  puzzled  Minnie  Barstow.  She 
was  uncertain  what  it  meant,  but  with  a  vague 
impression  that  she  ought  to  offer  something  in 
the  way  of  consolation  she  said :  "  Why,  Mrs. 
Homfrey,  I  wouldn't  like  you  to  think  that  your 
husband  —  " 

Richarda  turned  her  head  and  looked  at  her, 
but  the  girl  did  not  understand.  She  went  on : 
"  Why,  lots  of  things  like  that  happen.  You'd 
know,  if  you  were  in  a  store.  A  man  isn't  bad 
just  because  he  —  Why,  lots  of  women  never 
know  those  things  about  their  husbands.  It's 
only  because  of  the  child  —  if  it  wasn't  for  him, 
you'd  never  —  " 

"  Be  quiet ! "  said  Richarda  breathlessly. 
There  were  tears  in  her  eyes ;  nothing  had  hurt 
like  this. 

"  Oh  now,  don't ! "  entreated  the  girl. 
"  You're  making  it  out  so  much  worse  than  it  is. 
My !  I  wish  I  could  have  managed  some  other 
way.  But  I  couldn't.  And  you'll  never  hear 
of  me  again  after  we're  married.  We're  going 
West  —  I  don't  want  you  to  know  where.  If 
you'll  only  take  little  Jack.  And  when  you  see 
him  you'll  see  for  yourself  that  he's  —  " 

Richarda  held  up  her  hand  in  a  frightened 
vay.  "  You  mustn't  say  that,"  she  said  faintly. 
16 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

"  Well,  I  won't,  I'm  sure.  But  you  needn't 
feel  so  about  it.  Men  don't  look  at  some  things 
the  way  women  do.  It's  a  pity  they  don't,  but 
you  can't  alter  that.  I'm  only  telling  you  that 
because  it's  so,  and  I've  had  to  learn  to  under- 
stand that.  I  don't  want  to  make  things  hard 
for  you  —  all  I  want  is  for  my  boy  to  be  where 
he  belongs  in  a  sort  of  way,  growing  up  good 
with  you." 

Richarda  rose  suddenly  —  a  great  stillness 
possessed  her. 

"  Listen !  "  she  said.  "  Get  down  on  your 
knees  and  swear  to  me  —  swear  by  the  soul  of 
your  little  child  —  swear,  that  you  have  told  me 
the  truth." 

The  girl  burst  into  tears.  "  Oh,  my  soul, 
Mrs.  Homfrey !  I  didn't  know  you'd  feel  like 
that  about  it." 

When  she  was  gone,  Richarda  put  up  her 
hands  to  her  head  in  a  dazed  way.  "  I  wonder 
if  that  girl  thought  I  believed  that  of  —  of 
Tim,"  she  said  slowly. 

But  that  was  only  the  beginning  of  the  strug- 
gle. 

Richarda    passed    through    days    and    nights 
of  unutterable  blackness ;  there  seemed  nothing 
to  trust  in  the  wide  Universe.     Then  in  some 
17 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

blessed  moment,  her  faith  would  emerge  trium- 
phant from  the  clouds  which  had  so  strangely 
obscured  it. 

But  in  turn,  that  phase  would  pass.  For  al- 
ways, every  day,  there  was  Minnie  Barstow  to  be 
reckoned  with;  she  might  as  well  have  tried  ar- 
gument upon  an  ice-berg.  The  girl's  mind  was 
set  on  one  purpose ;  she  meant  to  marry  the  man 
who  wished  to  marry  her,  and  she  meant  to  go 
to  him  with  what,  the  longer  she  thought  her 
plan  over,  presented  itself  to  her  as  a  clear  con- 
science. She  developed  a  curious  tenderness  for 
Richarda  which,  however,  betrayed  her  into  no 
flinching  of  ultimate  intention,  especially  as 
she  soon  divined  the  fact  that,  in  Richarda's 
hands,  her  secret  would  be  doubly  safe- 
guarded. She  was  a  girl  who  had  risen  to  a 
responsible  position  through  her  ability  to  deal 
cleverly  with  a  particularly  difficult  class  of 
customers ;  her  experience  had  been  such  as  to 
fit  her  to  guage  with  almost  uncanny  shrewdness 
the  effect  of  certain  arguments  upon  Richarda. 
She  marshalled  her  proofs  with  a  deadly  skill ; 
she  referred  to  Homfrey  at  times  with  a  subtle 
past  possessiveness  which  caused  his  wife  the 
keenest  torture  —  which  made  her  feel  willing 
at  any  cost  to  purchase  this  girl's  silence  —  si- 
18 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

lence  to  herself.  She  blanched  before  those  lit- 
tle details  which  furnished  such  convicting 
proof  of  the  hateful  thing  charged  against  the 
man  she  loved. 

And  all  the  while  the  days  and  nights  were 
hurrying  by,  in  brutal  chase  of  each  other,  eager 
to  bring  her  face  to  face  with  him  again. 

And  each  day,  more  helplessly  than  before, 
she  wondered  at  the  strange  fate  which  had  come 
upon  her,  and  whither  it  would  lead  her. 

"  Listen,  Minnie,"  she  said  at  last  when  she 
felt  she  could  bear  no  more,  "  you  must  not  come 
to  see  me  again  until  I  send  for  you.  I  will  let 
you  know  what  I  mean,  to  do." 

Then  she  went  into  exile  with  her  soul. 

Ten  days  later,  she  stood  in  her  sitting-room 
alone  with  the  child.  His  mother,  whom  he 
had  never  known  as  such,  had  taken  brief,  un- 
demonstrative farewell  of  him.  Fate,  she  felt, 
had  after  all,  been  very  good  to  her;  she  was 
able  to  wipe  a  stain  from  her  memory  which  had 
caused  her  acute  anxiety.  "  We're  to  be  mar- 
ried on  Monday,"  she  said  to  Richarda  in  part- 
ing "  and  go  right  off.  If  I  don't  ever  see  you 
again  —  and  I  shan't  —  " 

"  Never  mind,"  said  Richarda  wanly. 

"  You're  not  looking  a  bit  well,"  said  the  girl 
anxiously.     "  I'm  real  sorry  for  that."    • 
19 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

"  It  doesn't  matter." 

"  My,  but  you're  a  good  woman ! "  exclaimed 
Minnie  Barstow,  moved  to  unusual  expression 
by  something  she  could  not  understand.  Ri- 
charda  smiled.  But  if  she  had  moaned  aloud  it 
would  not  have  surprised  her.  She  would  have 
been  glad  in  that  moment  of  the  courage  to 
abandon  herself  to  her  desires,  and  go  down  on 
her  knees  and  implore  the  girl  not  to  leave  her 
with  that  child.  But  she  was  silent,  as  the 
victim  in  the  hour  of  sacrifice.  She  shut  the 
door  upon  Minnie  Barstow,  and  went  back  —  to 
the  child. 

He  remained  perched  where  his  mother  had 
placed  him  —  an  adorable  thing,  dressed  with  a 
patrician  simplicity  of  style  which  did  credit  to 
Minnie  Barstow's  quick  wits.  As  Richarda 
came  into  the  room  he  slipped  off  his  chair,  and 
looked  about  him  in  a  troubled  way ;  he  picked 
up  his  cap  and  put  it  on. 

Richarda  stood  still  and  stared  at  him;  ter- 
ror seized  her.  How  could  anyone  doubt  who 
had  once  seen  his  «yes  ?  —  how  could  all  the 
world  fail  to  understand? 

And  he  was  there,  no  longer  an  abstract  prop- 
osition, but  a  fact,  human,  dependent  —  depend- 
ent upon  her,  of  all  others. 
20 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

The  child  sighed ;  he  was  growing  frightened. 
But  he  remained  silent,  though  his  lip  quivered. 

"  You  poor  little  boy !  "  said  Richarda.  In- 
stinctively, she  held  out  her  hand  to  him,  as  she 
would  have  held  it  to  any  lonely  helpless  child. 

But  the  slipping  of  the  soft  fingers  within  her 
own  was  more  than  she  could  bear;  a  misery 
of  tears  filled  her  eyes. 

"  Poor  lady !  " 

The  touch  of  the  little,  soothing  hand  upon 
her  cheek  did  for  her  what  suffering  had  not 
done  —  it  broke  down  the  stoical  self-control  be- 
hind which  she  had  entrenched  herself. 

"  Oh,  little  boy,"  she  whispered  in  a  sudden 
passion  of  pity  for  herself  and  for  him  —  he 
was  alone  and  so  was  she  — "  "  Little  boy, 
don't  be  afraid,  for  I  will  be  good  to  you.  I 
will." 


CHAPTER  III 

According  to  her  plan,  detailed  to  him  with  a 
complexity  which  it  had  been  a  labour  of  love 
to  elaborate,  Richarda  was  to  meet  her  husband 
upon  his  arrival  in  New  York ;  the  moment  came 
when  his  last  word  from  London  written  upon 
the  eve  of  sailing,  warned  her  that  if  she  in- 
tended to  do  as  she  had  promised  there  was  no 
time  to  lose. 

Already,  the  child  clung  to  her;  there  was 
that  in  Richarda  which  inclined  the  souls  of 
men,  big  or  little,  to  put  their  trust  in  her.  Yet 
she  was  not  indiscriminately  fond  of  children; 
like  a  person,  a  child  must  deserve  her  love  in 
order  to  obtain  it. 

But  this  little  Jack  —  with  what  tenacity  of 
appeal  he  had  fastened  himself  upon  her  heart ! 
—  he  had  not  been  in  the  house  a  day  before  she 
found  herself  listening  for  the  coming  of  his 
steps.  He  called  her  "  Lady  "  with  an  intona- 
tion that  charmed;  in  the  darkness  of  the  night 
she  flew  to  him  when  she  heard  his  frightened 
voice  saying  softly :  "  Lady  —  where  is  Lady  ?  " 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

—  eager  to  soothe,  she  was  thrilled  by  the  touch 
of  the  comforted  little  hand,  so  soft  in  hers. 

But  what  did  she  mean  to  do  about  him? 

She  did  not  know ;  she  was  living  blindly  now, 
from  hour  to  hour,  waiting  to  see  what  hap- 
pened. She  had  as  yet  but  one  clear  thought 
in  regard  to  the  problems  that  faced  her  —  she 
had  married  Timothy  Homfrey  for  better,  for 
worse;  she  was  no  coward. 

Beyond  that,  she  refused  to  think;  she  re- 
fused to  permit  to  herself,  after  the  first  crush- 
ing hours  of  conviction,  further  analysis  of  the 
disaster  which  had  befallen  her. 

It  was  because  her  wound  was  so  deep  that  her 
numbness  was  so  great.  By  and  by  she  under- 
stood that. 

To  her  household  she  explained  that  she  had 
taken  the  little  boy  because  he  was  friendless ; 
in  this  instance  her  habitual  reserve  stood  her  in 
good  stead;  her  servants  were  too  much  accus- 
tomed to  it  to  expect  informing  details. 

"  I  wouldn't  wonder  if  she  don't  know  one 
thing  about  him  herself,"  said  Anna  to  the 
others.  "  This  morning  I  went  in  to  tell  her 
about  some  clothes  he's  needing  —  she  listened 
to  me  with  that  far-away  look  she  has  in  her 
eyes,  and  then  she  said :  "  Oh  Anna,  I  wish  you 
23 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

wouldn't  talk  to  me  about  it.  Go  away,  and 
get  whatever  he  wants."  I  asked  her  what  his 
name  was,  and  she  stared  at  me  as  blank  as  a 
blind  cat  and  said :  "  I  don't  know  —  I  never 
thought  of  that."  Then  I  asked  him.  But 
my !  you  can't  get  much  to  rely  on  out  of  a  child 
of  four.  I  got  desperate  at  last  and  said: 
"Was  it  Perkins?"  and  he  said:  "Yes." 
Then  I  said :  "  Maybe  it's  Smith,"  and  he  said : 
"  Yes."  And  he  smiled  as  sweet  at  me !  He's 
a  real  interesting  child." 

He  proved  to  be  that,  perhaps  as  much  by  his 
easy  grace  in  lying  as  by  anything  else.  Ri- 
charda  was  appalled ;  she  had  never  imagined  an 
innocent  child  capable  of  such  fertility  of  in- 
vention in  disposing  of  evidence  likely  to  in- 
criminate him. 

"  Kitty  did  that  —  bad  Kitty !  "  he  remarked 
with  an  air  of  regretful  candour  when  Richarda 
discovered  him  in  front  of  her  mirror,  her  big- 
gest scissors  in  his  right  hand,  and  in  the  other, 
a  lock  of  hair  from  the  middle  of  his  forehead. 

"  Then  shall  I  whip  Kitty?  "  asked  Richarda. 

"Yes  — Lady  whip  Kitty  — bad  Kitty." 

Richarda  was  shocked. 

"  Law  Ma'am !  don't  take  his  little  ways  too 
seriously,"  said  Anna.  "  My  mother  always 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

stuck  to  it  children  lied  j  ust  like  they  cried  — 
as  a  means  of  passing  the  time.  She  said  a  child 
didn't  expect  anybody  but  a  fool  to  believe  his 
little  tales.  She  said  it  didn't  make  a  bit  of 
difference  in  the  long  run  so  long  as  you  didn't 
tell  the  child  he  was  lying." 

And  ultimately,  in  despair,  perhaps  as  the  re- 
sult of  an  experience  similar  to  that  of  Anna's 
mother,  Richarda  threw  ethical  considerations 
to  the  four  winds,  and  decided  that  if  Jack 
would  lie  —  and  that  was  apparently  a  con- 
clusion best  foregone  —  he  might  as  well  lie 
happily.  Thus  she  laid  lightly  aside  some 
weighty  theories  as  to  the  training  of  youth  in 
exchange  for  the  idea  that  it  was  first  her  duty 
to  make  this  child  happy  —  then,  if  possible, 
good.  There  was  surely  more  chance  of  his 
being  good  if  he  were  happy  than  if  he  were  un- 
happy. 

Perhaps  she  planned  more  eagerly  for  his 
happiness  than  she  realized  because  she  herself 
was  in  such  stress  of  unhappiness.  She  believed 
that  she  had  ceased  to  demand  of  life  anything 
for  herself  —  neither  love  nor  pity  —  neither 
joy  nor  peace.  She  did  not  feel  now  that  the 
man  she  had  married  had  done  her  an  especial 
wrong  —  that  because  of  this  little  child  she 
25 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

owed  him  any  grudge,  or  that  he  owed  her  ex- 
planation, repentance.  Her  entire  conception 
of  life  had  suffered  overturn  —  that  was  all.  It 
was  not  the  fault  of  her  husband,  nor  of  herself 
that  the  man  she  had  married  had  been  the  prod- 
uct of  their  joint  imaginings  —  that  was  the 
way  of  love.  And  for  the  man  it  was  a  very 
good  way  —  so  good  that  the  task  which  lay 
before  her  was  never  to  let  him  suspect  that  she 
had  discovered  him  to  be  made  of  other  than  the 
stuff  of  which  her  dreams  had  fashioned  him. 

That  was  the  task  that  lay  before  her  —  that 
he  should  never  know.  She  must  protect  him 
from  all  knowledge  that  debased  —  she  must 
keep  before  him  the  vision  in  which  she  had 
believed;  she  must  never  destroy  that  ideal  of 
himself  as  noble,  good,  and  true  —  simple  words, 
which  ached  strangely  on  her  lips  —  in  which 
she  had  thought  that  he  too  believed. 

As  to  herself,  she  must  face  the  truth.  Life 
was  no  gaily  tinted  dream.  A  month  ago  she 
would  have  passed  Minnie  Barstow  in  the  street, 
unconscious  of  the  link  which  bound  them.  But 
the  link  would  have  been  there,  nevertheless. 

She  must  try  to  understand  why  a  man  was 
some  of  those  strange  things  he  appeared  to  be, 
because  it  was  with  such  a  real  man  that  she  was 
to  live  out  her  life. 

26 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

But  the  questions  which  came  to  her  in  this 
search  after  understanding  were  strange  and 
terrible.  How  could  a  man  pass  through  such 
an  experience,  and  then  let  all  remembrance  of  it 
drift  lightly  out  of  his  life  ?  Had  men  —  the 
men  she  was  trying  so  hard  to  understand  —  no 
conscience  about  things  like  that? 

The  child  came  into  the  room  and  held  his 
bleeding  finger  towards  her.  "  Lady  mend  that. 
Jack's  finger  all  bwoke,"  he  said  with  a  little 
sob  —  she  had  discovered  that  he  never  cried 
aloud  when  he  was  hurt  —  only  when  he  was 
frightened  or  angry.  She  "  mended "  the 
finger,  and  took  him  up  on  her  lap ;  he  fell 
asleep  with  his  head  against  her  breast.  She 
looked  long  at  him ;  she  was  thinking  that  he  be- 
longed to  a  strange  sort. 

Life  had  become  curiously  unreal  to  her;  she 
seemed  to  have  passed  from  the  substance  of 
things  into  the  shadow  of  them.  A  man  had 
told  her  that  he  loved  her  —  she  had  believed 
him,  and  had  given  herself  to  him;  the  child  to 
be  was  the  measure  of  her  faith  in  him.  She 
wondered  if  men  knew  what  they  meant  by  that 
difficult  word  Love. 

Men  —  behind  the  impersonality  she  uncon- 
sciously screened  the  one  man  with  whom  her 
27 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

thoughts  were  concerned.  But  out  of  the  chaos 
of  her  thinking  there  slowly  emerged  a  definite 
aim.  She  would  make  reparation;  she  was  the 
only  one  who  could.  A  great  opportunity  had 
come  to  her  —  the  opportunity  to  wipe  out  her 
husband's  —  but  she  hesitated,  apprehensive  of 
the  word  which  rose  to  her  lips.  If  she  could 
only  help  this  child  to  grow  into  worthy  man- 
hood—  if  she  could  only  prove  that  the  world 
was  a  better  place  because  he  had  come  into  it, 
then  his  life  would  be  justified  —  it  would  be, 
in  a  way,  its  own  excuse  for  being.  It  was  only 
a  question  of  elimination  —  elimination  of  her- 
self, of  her  prejudice  —  her  childish  selfishness. 

In  the  long  run,  her  arguments  always 
brought  her  back  to  that  —  the  healing  of  this 
wound  in  her  husband's  honour  depended  upon 
her  —  upon  the  fineness  of  her  courage,  her 
pride  —  upon  her  faith  in  the  essential  upright- 
ness of  Tim.  She  must  not  fail  him  at  the  point 
where  he  needed  her  most. 

A  high  commission  was  offered  to  her,  but  it 
was  only  after  days  and  nights  of  bitter  think- 
ing that  she  at  last  held  out  her  hand  to  receive 
it.  Doubt  of  herself,  hunger  for  revenge  — 
scorn  of  the  faiths  she  had  held  most  dear  — 
all  these  she  knew  before  she  made  the  mystical 
28 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

surrender  of  herself  which  marked  the  begin- 
ning of  a  new  life  for  her  as  surely  as  if  she  had 
taken  veil  and  vow.  In  those  flaming  moments 
of  repudiation  when  she  flung  back  to  the  Un- 
known the  burden  which  had  been  laid  upon  her 
—  with  wildest  "  I  will  not  " —  she  best  knew 
herself  conquered. 

She  was  to  meet  Homfrey  in  New  York  on  the 
twenty-second ;  the  tedious  hours  of  the  j  ourney 
seemed  to  her  neither  long  nor  short ;  they  were 
but  a  continuation  of  that  general  blur  in  which 
everything  that  concerned  her  seemed  involved. 

She  walked  slowly  down  Fifth  Avenue ;  it  was 
the  "  dimmit "  time  —  the  city's  highway  was 
etherealised  in  its  mighty  glamour.  Away  in 
the  distance,  as  though  anchored  to  the  sky  by 
invisible  chain,  a  perilously  slender  building 
descended  in  aerial  line  to  earth  ;  the  pale  beauty 
of  the  twilight  glorified  the  commonest  facts  of 
wood  and  stone  —  it  was  a  city  of  dreams  that 
Richarda  looked  upon. 

During  the  night  a  light  rain  began  to  fall, 
changing  from  that  into  a  driving  sleet,  and 
then  into  the  snow  that  stings.  By  the 
time  Richarda  went  to  breakfast  the  streets  were 
in  the  grasp  of  a  blizzard,  yet  there  was  that 
Salvation  Army  woman  she  had  noticed  the 
29 


night  before,  back  at  her  post,  soliciting  for  the 
Waifs'  Christmas  dinner.  She  felt  disgusted. 
It  was  not  a  sense  of  devotion  that  kept  her 
there  in  the  face  of  such  weather  —  it  was  the 
stupid  obstinacy  of  the  self-righteous  martyr. 

She  determined  to  forget  the  woman,  but  she 
could  not  • —  she  grew  more  and  more  restless ; 
at  last  she  took  a  bill  from  her  purse.  "  Send 
that  to  that  woman  out  there,"  she  said  to  her 
waiter.  "  And  tell  her  to  go  home." 

By  and  by  a  bell-boy  hunted  her  up.  "  Yes, 
I  know,"  she  said,  anticipating  his  message,  "  I 
don't  want  to  hear  what  she  said,  because  she 
hasn't  gone  home,  and  I'm  very  angry."  But 
she  smiled,  and  the  boy  grinned. 

All  that  morning  she  waited,  imprisoned,  for 
word  from  the  Steam-Ship  company.  None 
came ;  in  the  afternoon  she  called  up  the  office. 

The  Elysia  had  not  yet  been  heard  from,  but 
there  was  not  the  least  cause  for  anxiety ;  the 
weather  was  against  her.  To-morrow,  without 
doubt,  she  would  be  reported. 

But  the  twenty-third  came  —  the  twenty- 
fourth.  Yes,  there  had  probably  been  some 
accident,  which  but  for  the  unfortunate  weather 
would  most  likely  not  have  amounted  to  any- 
thing. The  voice  of  the  Company  became  me- 
chanically calm,  but  it  admitted  no  fears. 
30 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

The  twenty-fifth  —  she  telegraphed  again  to 
Anna  —  it  would  be  a  strange  Christmas  for 
that  little  boy  Jack. 

When  she  reached  the  hotel  on  the  night  of 
the  twenty-sixth,  after  a  day  practically  spent 
at  the  office  of  the  Steam-Ship  company,  she  sat 
down  quietly  and  for  a  long  time  hardly  stirred. 
All  through  the  dragging  day  there  had  been 
someone  else  to  think  of  —  the  mother  waiting 
for  her  boy  —  the  young  man,  who  five  minutes 
after  his  first  word  to  her,  unburdened  so  much 
of  his  history  and  latest  love-affair  that  hence- 
forth he  bore  himself  towards  her  with  the  air 
of  a  life-long  intimate  —  the  quiet  woman  in  the 
corner  who  was  much  too  shy  to  take  anyone 
voluntarily  into  her  confidence,  but  who,  being 
much  blustered  upon  by  the  young  man,  finally 
admitted  in  an  unpremeditated  burst  of  volu- 
bility :  "  My  Christmas  dinner  was  spoilt  — • 
utterly  spoilt,  and  everything  done  to  a  turn. 
I  couldn't  believe  my  husband  wouldn't  get  here 
for  it  —  I  had  everything  the  way  he  likes  it 
best.  You'd  think  this  Company  would  be 
ashamed  of  itself.  But  these  big  concerns 
don't  care  for  anybody  —  I've  always  said  so." 
She  glared  at  the  sorely  harassed  clerk,  who  was 
endeavouring  to  explain  to  another  woman  why 
31 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

it  seemed  premature  to  conclude  that  the  boat 
had  been  burnt  at  sea  —  to  another,  how  long 
it  would  take  a  man  with  a  life-belt  to  swim  an 
unknown  distance,  and  to  a  determined  gentle- 
man who  made  demand  for  the  "  Elysia  "  regu- 
larly every  ten  minutes,  seeming  to  be  convinced 
that  the  Company  had  the  boat  and  all  its  pas- 
sengers somewhere  up  its  sleeve  —  that  the 
steamer  was  not  in  yet,  but  was  expected  at  any 
moment. 

Then  there  was  the  man  to  pacify  who  wished 
to  inquire  —  merely  to  inquire  —  why  in  these 
advanced  days  boats  were  not  equipped  with  self- 
acting  safety  devices  such  as  would  render  all 
accidents  mechanically  impossible.  He  and 
the  other  man  presently  fastened  upon  each 
other  as  kindred  spirits ;  they  paced  the  floor, 
devising  suits  against  the  Company,  whose  pur- 
pose they  easily  proved  to  be  the  destruction  of 
human  life. 

But  no  one  smiled  at  them.  Their  lack  of 
common-sense  was  but  evidence  of  the  serious- 
ness of  that  anxiety,  which  was  spread  like  a 
pall  over  every  heart. 

A  band  of  Salvation  Army  workers  came  in 
—  their  leader  talked  quietly  with  the  clerk  for 
some  minutes,  then  imparted  to  his  companions 
32 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

the  information  he  had  gained ;  the  boat  had  a 
distinguished  party  of  their  officials  on  board. 

There  was  a  moment's  stir;  they  fell  on  their 
knees ;  a  man's  voice  was  raised  in  the  simplicity 
of  earnest  prayer:  "Our  most  blessed  Lord  and 
God  —  we  come  to  Thee  in  trouble.  Help  us 
to  know  that  we  are  resting  in  the  hollow  of 
Thy  hand,  Thy  blessed  hand  of  love.  Help  us 
to  realise  that  beneath  the  shadow  of  the  Great 
Rock  there  is  rest,  eternal  rest.  O  our  most 
blessed  Lord  and  God,  we  remember  that  Thou 
didst  walk  the  raging  sea,  that  Thou  didst  still 
the  troubled  waters.  We  remember  that  our 
loved  ones  are  not  alone  upon  the  wide  ocean, 
for  Thou  art  with  them  —  they  are  safe,  there 
as  here.  And  so,  help  us,  O  most  blessed  God, 
each  one,  to  look  up  into  the  brightness  of  Thy 
face  and  to  say:  Lord  Jesus,  I  rest  in  Thee." 

The  chorus  of  Hallelujahs  rose  fervent,  then 
all  was  still  until  a  woman  broke  into  jubilant 
song: 

Blessed  assurance,  Jesus  is  mine! 

O  what  a  foretaste  of  glory  divine! 
Heir  of  Salvation,  purchase  of  God, 

Born  of  His  Spirit,  washed  in  His  Blood. 

The  dingy  room  was  transfigured,  the  mystery 
33 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

of  faith  weaving  its  spell  about  each  heart  while 
a  common  terror  bound  one  to  the  other;  for 
this  brief  moment  of  contact  believer  and  scoffer 
met  on  equal  ground. 

Richarda  sat  with  bent  head  and  closed  eyes. 
She  was  caught  up  on  high  in  the  ecstasy  of 
vision  —  the  meaning  of  life  seemed  divinely 
revealed  to  her.  Renunciation  —  that  strong 
cry  of  a  long  line  of  souls  of  purest  spiritual  de- 
scent —  Renunciation  —  the  word  beat  upon  her 
heart. 

Perfect  submission,  all  is  at  rest, 

I  in  my  Saviour  am  happy  and  blest  — 

Pathetic  doggerel,  sung  with  an  abandon  and 
vehemence  of  tempo  that  would  have  done  credit 
to  a  music-hall!  But  from  the  beginning  of 
things,  the  spirit  of  man  has  through  strange 
ways  secured  his  exaltation  into  the  realm  of  the 
Invisible.  To  Richarda,  as  to  others  at  this 
moment,  it  mattered  little  by  what  steps  they 
had  climbed  —  they  were  upon  the  Mount. 

But  it  was  night;  she  was  alone  once  more. 
Outside,  the  storm  which  for  a  time  had  lessened, 
had  increased  in  fury.  What  ship,  disabled, 
helpless,  could  brave  out  such  tempest? 

She  was  alone  again  with  those  questions  that 
34 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

bewildered  her.  Even  in  this  time  of  an  anxiety 
that  froze  and  fevered  in  her  heart  alternately, 
they  would  not  let  her  go. 

And  yet  —  if  she  could  only  see  him  for  a 
moment  —  if  she  might  only  tell  him  that  she 
had  thought  these  cruel  things  because  she  did 
not  know,  because  she  could  not  understand  — 
The  words  turned  back  on  her  lips.  She  did 
know  —  she  did  understand. 

There  was  a  knock  at  the  door  —  late  though 
it  was,  a  card  was  handed  in  to  her.  It  was 
that  of  Dawson,  the  senior  member  of  Homfrey's 
firm.  She  hurried  down  to  see  him. 

"  Yes,  I  know  —  you  wired  me  not  to  come," 
he  began  instantly,  "  but  I  couldn't  stand  it  a 
minute  longer.  My  wife  and  I  —  Oh,  we  didn't 
have  me  come  on  because  we  felt  at  all  anxious 
about  this  boat  —  it  was  only  because  we  were 
afraid  you  might  have  considerable  time  hang- 
ing on  your  hands,  and  get  to  feeling  lonesome. 
Now,  if  you  could  smoke  —  but  I  suppose  you 
don't?  "  Richarda  laughed  —  she  had  almost 
forgotten  that  she  could. 

The  twenty-seventh  passed  — the  twenty- 
eighth.  Incoming  vessels  reported  no  news  of 
the  "  Elysia  "  —  the  Company  no  longer  con- 
cealed its  fears.  Richarda  lay  still  for  long 
35 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

hours,  her  eyes  fixed  upon  the  telephone;  she 
started  violently  when  it  clicked  occasionally ; 
under  the  strain  of  her  demand  upon  it  for  ut- 
terance, it  seemed  to  acquire  personality.  In 
the  afternoon  Dawson  broke  in  upon  her,  and 
took  her  by  main  force  of  persuasion  for  a  walk, 
under  pretence  of  requiring  her  help  in  buying 
something  for  his  wife.  At  any  other  time  it 
would  have  been  a  luxury  to  shop  with  him  — 
he  was  so  ignorant,  so  naive,  but  always  equal 
to  the  situation. 

"  That  lace  now,"  he  said,  pointing  to  a  piece 
on  the  counter. 

"  Forty-five  dollars  a  yard,"  snapped  the  girl, 
putting  it  back  into  the  drawer  without  a  look 
at  him. 

"  Would  you  please  let  me  know  how  many 
yards  there  are  in  the  bolt?  "  he  asked  mildly. 

"  There's  twelve  yards  and  three-eighths," 
announced  the  girl  presently. 

"  Thank  you.  If  I  took  it  I  should  require 
thirteen,"  said  Dawson  blandly  and  walked  on. 

"  It's  exasperating,"  he  remarked  to  Ri- 
charda,  "  here  we  are,  working  ourselves  up  to 
the  boiling  point,  and  I'll  lay  ten  to  one  at  this 
moment  Homfrey  is  probably  pocketing  the 
pool  with  that  open-hearted  smile  of  his  —  never 
36 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

was  such  a  lucky  dog  I —  Great  Scott !  nobody 
who  knows  him  would  expect  him  to  make  this 
trip  and  not  have  something  dramatic  happen. 
That  isn't  his  way.  Now  look  at  me !  —  I  was 
born  without  style  —  you  can't  imagine  any 
self-respecting  ship  doing  fancy  stunts  because 
I  happened  to  be  on  board.  But  Homfrey  — 
it's  always  like  a  scene  in  a  play  when  you  come 
to  Homfrey." 

Richarda  smiled ;  she  understood  Dawson's 
manoeuvres;  his  coming  had  alarmed  her  more 
than  anything  else,  but  she  was  glad  he  had 
come. 

And  now  it  was  night  again  —  night,  that  she 
dreaded,  when  the  burr  of  the  elevators  rasping 
the  shaft  was  the  only  sound  left  over  from  the 
activities  of  the  day. 

She  wondered  dully  how  much  longer  she 
could  bear  this ;  even  as  she  wondered,  pathetic 
fragments  of  prayer  rose  to  her  lips  and 
sounded  strange  in  her  ears. 

It  was  useless  to  pretend  that  she  thought 
she  could  sleep ;  she  got  up,  and  turning  on  the 
light,  began  to  read.  She  hurried  through 
page  after  page  —  she  began  to  think  the  story 
interested  her.  But  the  next  moment  she  was 
sobbing.  Tim  loved  her  —  she  knew  it  —  no 
37 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

deed  of  his  could  destroy  her  faith  in  that.  She 
moved  a  high-backed  chair  between  the  telephone 
and  her  eyes,  and  began  to  think  again.  But 
she  could  not  stand  that  —  better  see  the  thing 
than  feel  it  boring  through  to  her  heart.  Then 
she  sat  still,  looking  at  it  —  imploring,  demand- 
ing, as  if  she  thought  it  could  hear  her.  She 
knew  it  would  not  answer,  but  the  clamour  in 
her  brain  dulled  the  aching  in  her  ears,  so  tired 
of  listening. 

And  then,  suddenly,  as  she  looked  at  it,  it 
rang  —  with  an  outcry  into  the  silence  as  terri- 
fying as  a  midnight  alarm  of  fire. 

"  Oh  God !  "  she  said  in  a  frightened  whis- 
per ;  she  staggered  to  it  as  a  blind  woman  might. 

But  she  could  hear  nothing  —  the  tumult 
within  herself  was  so  great. 

"  I  can't  hear  you,"  she  cried  helplessly ;  she 
beat  with  her  hand  upon  the  wall ;  she  had  a 
feeling  that  the  news  would  escape  and  never 
become  hers. 

"  What  ?  "  she  said  again ;  the  expression  of 
her  face  did  not  change,  though  the  tears  poured 
over  it,  as  she  mechanically  repeated  the  mes- 
sage :  "  The  '  Elysia  '  sighted  —  being  towed 
in  —  better  be  at  the  dock  at  ten  in  the  morn- 
ing." — 

38 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

She  hung  up  the  receiver  —  and  the  next 
minute  looked  at  the  instrument,  doubting. 
Had  it  said  that?  —  the  "  Elysia"  sighted? 
She  felt  the  tears  on  her  face  and  wondered. 
There  was  nothing  to  weep  about.  She  had 
never  really  doubted  that  the  boat  would  get  in. 

Four  o'clock ;  seven  —  no !  — •  six  hours  to 
wait ;  there  was  no  need  to  be  in  a  hurry.  But 
in  feverish  haste  she  laid  out  her  hat  and  coat. 

"  I  can't,"  she  whispered  a  long  time  after- 
wards. "  I  never  can  meet  him.  What  can  I 
say?  There's  Jack  —  and  everything"  A 
sob  broke  from  her.  "  And  I'm  so  afraid. 
And  it  isn't  true  —  I  do  love  him." 

She  stood  up,  shaken,  by  a  sudden  storm. 
"  Why  did  you  do  it,  Tim  ?  How  could  you  — 
when  7  was  to  love  you  ?  " 


39 


CHAPTER  IV 

From  far  down  the  river  front  came  the  mur- 
mur of  prolonged  cheering  as  the  "  Elysia " 
grew  clear  upon  the  distance;  the  stout  little 
tug  which  had  her  in  tow  snorted  pompously  as  it 
nosed  its  way  through  the  jam,  of  craft  of  all 
descriptions  wedged  along  her  course.  Whistles 
and  fog-horns  rioted  in  a  frenzy  of  jubilation; 
men  shouted  and  women  waved  handkerchiefs 
on  general  principles  without  reference  to  their 
having  friend  or  relative  on  board.  "  Gee ! 
ain't  it  great ! "  exclaimed  one  small  Arab  to 
another  as  he  turned  a  hand-spring  out  of  the 
sheer  necessity  of  the  situation  —  "  Gee !  but  I 
wish  it  happened  every  day." 

It  was  a  great  sight ;  the  weird  beauty  of  the 
vessel  drew  unconscious  acclaim  from  those  who 
consciously  realised  nothing  of  it.  She  came 
on  steadily  —  a  mystic  ship,  sheeted  with  ice 
from  mast-head  to  water-line;  glittering  in 
the  cold  brilliance  of  the  sun  like  a  silver  phan- 
tom perilously  apt  to  vanish  in  the  sighing  of 
faintest  breeze;  a  dream  ship,  floating  towards 
40 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

the  abodes  of  men  from  some  far-off  shore  of 
forsaken  romance. 

But  it  was  at  the  Company's  dock  that  ex- 
citement was  at  the  maximum ;  grouped  close 
to  its  edge  the  Salvation  Army  people  were 
holding  a  meeting  as  unconscious  of  the  throng 
pressing  upon  them  as  if  they  stood  within  the 
precincts  of  Paradise.  But  no  one  noticed 
them every  face  was  strained  upon  the  near- 
ing  ship. 

"  I've  got  great  respect  for  the  drummers 
who  travel  with  that  line  of  goods,"  remarked 
Dawson  to  Richarda.  "  They're  only  one  more 
variety  of  the  human  fool,  maybe,  but  they're  a 
mighty  beneficent  variety.  There's  a  lot  in  that 
uniform,  of  course.  I've  often  thought  I'd  be  a 
shining  light  if  you  could  get  me  into  one  of 
those  rigs.  I'd  think  differently,  and  act  dif- 
ferently, and  I'd  be  different.  Upon  my  soul, 
it's  pretty  bewildering  to  get  meditating  on 
these  things.  There's  so  blamed  much  in  life 
that  seems  serious  that's  only  a  matter  of  uni- 
form." 

Dawson's  expression  was  so  comical  that 
Richarda  laughed  —  that  seemed  to  satisfy 
him ;  it  had  made  him  feel  shivery  to  see  a  woman 
look  so  white. 

41 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

But  Richarda  never  got  out  of  her  blood  the 
memory  of  those  moments  as  the  great  vessel 
drew  steadily  nearer,  until  the  faces  of  the  pas- 
sengers crowded  together  in  the  bow  emerged 
from  the  general  blur,  as  in  a  picture  slowly 
developing  upon  a  misty  plate. 

The  instant  came  when  she  raised  her  eyes  — 
she  must  —  it  was  no  longer  possible  to  wave 
her  handkerchief  blindly,  impersonally.  For 
there  was  Homfrey,  leaning  far  out  over  the 
rail,  his  hands  stretched  to  her,  his  face  cut 
clear  against  a  background  of  faces. 

Nearer  and  nearer  —  Homfrey  was  shouting 
now  —  so  was  everyone  else  —  the  din  was  ap- 
palling —  every  whistle  and  horn  on  the  river 
had  gone  mad  —  the  Salvation  Army  contingent 
was  screaming  hoarsely,  "  Throw  out  the  life- 
line "  to  the  thunder  of  the  drums,  but  no  one 
heard  them,  for  nearer  and  nearer  she  came,  this 
white  ship  snatched  from  the  sea. 

Then  suddenly,  Richarda  leaned  forward; 
the  smile  that  little  Jack  knew  broke  over  her 
face,  but  her  brown  eyes  filled  with  tears  that 
she  held  unf alien. 

"  Tim !  "  she  whispered  —  "  Tim !  " 

The  day  that  followed  seemed  but  part  of 
the  same  dream  —  a  dream  to  which  they  yielded 
42 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

themselves  compelled  by  its  charm.  They  were 
youth  and  maiden,  lover  and  beloved,  husband 
and  wife  all  over  again. 

"  Do  you  remember  the  first  time  I  kissed 
you  ?  "  asked  Homf rey  the  morning  after  his 
return  —  he  had  just  loosed  her  from  his  arms. 

"  Remember?  "  —  she  blushed  deeply. 

"  Yes.  Do  you  ?  Then  look  at  me  straight. 
No,  not  that  way.  Charda,  tell  me. —  Had  a 
man  ever  kissed  you  before  ?  " 

There  was  upon  him  the  passion  of  renewed 
possession  of  this  woman  whom  in  marriage  he 
had  proved  adorable;  he  was  jealous  and  proud 
of  being  so. 

Richarda  laughed  softly,  but  in  the  next  mo- 
ment she  felt  herself  grow  white;  she  was  re- 
membering the  questions  she  dare  not  ask  him 

—  the  contrast  was  cruel. 

She  had  planned  to  tell  him  of  Jack  at  once 

—  this  little  boy  whom  she  had  been  moved  to 
take  into  her  home.     But  their  first  hours  to- 
gether were  crowded  with  talk  that   concerned 
Homfrey;  then  they  discovered  themselves,  and 
after  that,  she  waited  perilously  upon  an  auspi- 
cious moment. 

Thus  they  reached  home.     Until  then,  Fate 
had  dangled  before  her  the  choice  of  a  moment 
43 


of  revelation ;  she  realised  when  it  was  too  late 
that  she  had  ignored  unmistakable  opportunities. 

As  they  were  about  to  cross  the  threshold, 
Homfrey  paused,  and  said  in  a  voice  touched 
with  emotion :  "  Oh,  Charda,  how  many  times 
I  thought  that  if  I  might  only  get  back  and  see 
you  again  just  once  — "  he  broke  off  with  a 
laugh,  and  as  they  went  in,  kissed  her  with  a 
certain  remoteness  that  had  a  sacramental  grace 
upon  it.  It  was  a  renewed  espousal  of  their 
home  life. 

After  he  had  greeted  the  servants  and  gone 
up-stairs,  Richarda  loitered.  "  Anna,  where  is 
Jack  ?  "  she  asked. 

"  Oh,  I'm  so  vexed,  Mrs.  Homfrey.  He  went 
out  to  walk  and  Nettie  only  just  got  in  with  him 
—  she  didn't  know  it  was  so  late.  He's  nearly 
ready  —  you'll  have  him  down  the  same  as  be- 
fore, I  suppose?  " 

She  had  not  thought  of  that  —  she  felt  sud- 
denly nerveless ;  exhausted,  as  a  hunted  creature ; 
she  was  on  the  brink,  looking  into  depths  she 
could  not  fathom. 

Thus  it  happened  that  dinner  was  nearly  over 

when  the  door  from  the  hall  was  pushed  open  — 

a  little  figure  appeared  upon  the  threshold  and 

paused  uncertain  with  eyes  askance  upon  the  un- 

44 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

known  man.  But  in  Richarda's  face  they  found 
haven. 

"Oh  Lady,  Lady!"  With  a  gurgle  of  joy 
the  child  turned  to  her.  His  white  suit,  gay 
with  crimson  sash,  made  brave  accoutrement  for 
a  figure  which  had  an  innocent  regality  of  bear- 
ing worthy  of  a  little  prince.  He  advanced  a 
step ;  then  waited.  "  Jack's  here,  Lady,"  he 
said  softly  —  ingratiatingly. 

But  in  that  moment,  Richarda's  heart  turned 
traitor  to  him.  It  was  not  too  late  to  repudiate 
—  to  explain  to  Homf rey  that  she  had  been 
merely  playing  with  a  passing  whim  —  that  to- 
morrow —  why,  the  boy  was  nothing  to  her. 

Happiness  was  her  right  —  this  child  should 
not  deprive  her  of  it.  She  loved  Tim  —  he  loved 
her  —  it  was  enough. 

And  for  that  long  moment,  little  Jack  be- 
longed nowhere. 

Perhaps  some  cruel  intuition  of  his  plight 
pierced  his  childish  heart;  his  lip  quivered,  his 
eyes  grew  stormy.  Suddenly  he  stamped  his 
elaborately  bowed  and  buckled  foot  — "  Lady  !  " 

He  demanded  recognition. 

"  Jack,  my  poor  little  Jack !  "  With  a  cry 
Richarda  flew  to  him  —  gathered  him  into  her 
young,  impetuous  arms  — "  Oh  Jack,  are  you 
45 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

glad  Lady's  home?  Did  you  miss  her?  Jack, 
have  you  been  happy?  Have  you  been  good?  " 

He  answered  none  of  these  things ;  in  the  care- 
less content  of  recovered  joy  he  dragged  her 
comb  from  her  hair.  "  Lady  got  new  pretty," 
he  said  approvingly,  as  he  rubbed  the  stones,  and 
looked  to  see  if  the  shine  had  come  off  on  his 
fingers. 

"  Tim  " —  Richarda  began  breathlessly  ;  she 
could  not  go  on. 

"  Don't  hurry,  dear.  The  suspense  is  nearly 
killing  me,  but  I  daresay  I  can  hold  out  until 
you  put  that  boy  down,  and  get  your  breath." 
Homfrey  calmly  continued  his  dinner.  "  You're 
a  woman  of  moods,  aren't  you,  Charda?  This 
is  one  I  take  it.  It  makes  a  charming  comedy. 
Place  —  a  dining-room.  Time  —  eight-thirty 
P.  M.  Dramatis  Persona*  —  one  husband  and 
one  wife.  Enter,  unannounced,  one  child  with- 
out encumbrance.  It  sounds  promising.  When 
you're  ready,  Charda  —  but  isn't  that  boy  rather 
heavy  for  you?  " 

But  Richarda  danced  to  the  end  of  the  long 
room  and  back  again.  Then  she  put  Jack  into 
a  chair  close  to  her  own,  and  began  to  speak ; 
she  was  honestly  breathless  now,  as  she  had  hoped 
£o  be.  "  Yes,  that's  it,  Tim.  I  knew  you'd 
46 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

understand.  I  am  —  just  that  —  a  woman  of 
moods.  This  —  isn't  it  a  crazy  one?  —  I've  had 
him  almost  a  month.  I  knew  you  wouldn't  mind. 
I  wanted  him  so  much." 

"  I  see.  What  is  home  without  a  foundling," 
said  Homfrey  grimly.  "  But  is  this  all? 
Aren't  there  more  of  him?  You  don't  mean  to 
say  that  one  satisfied  you?  Don't  you  think 
he'll  be  lonely?  Perhaps  you'll  adopt  a  grand- 
father for  him,  like  Mrs.  Cline  who  said  her 
children  cried  for  one." 

Richarda  laughed.  "  What  an  idea !  No,  I 
promise  —  I  won't  do  that.  But  I  lead  such  a 
selfish  life.  Dear,  you  know.  I  never  do  any- 
thing for  anyone.  This  seemed  a  chance.  And 
don't  you  think  — " 

"  No,  I  can't  say  that  I  do,"  retorted  Hom- 
frey drily. 

"  Oh,  how  stupid  of  me,  dear.  Men  aren't  in- 
terested in  children  as  children,  I  suppose."  She 
did  not  wish  to  call  Homfrey's  attention  to  the 
child,  but  she  was  treading  now  upon  such 
treacherous  surface  that  fear  of  the  next  step 
unnerved  her.  She  dreaded  the  explanations 
which  would  be  demanded  of  her  as  soon  as  she 
was  alone  with  her  husband. 

But  to  her  amazement  Homfrey  did  not  pur- 
47 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

sue  the  matter  with  her.  There  was  reason  for 
that.  The  man's  weariness  amounted  to  posi- 
tive illness ;  the  reaction  had  set  in  —  reaction 
consequent  upon  weeks  of  the  most  strategic 
legal  attack  he  had  ever  conducted,  followed  by 
a  journey  during  which  he  had  exhausted  him- 
self for  the  entertainment  of  less  courageous 
fellow-travellers,  at  the  same  time  that  he  was 
tormented  by  the  thought  of  Richarda's  inevi- 
table anxiety  about  him. 

For  the  present,  the  consequence  merely  was 
that  whenever  he  thought  of  the  child,  he  hated 
it,  as  he  thought  any  self-respecting  man  would 
hate  it.  To  see  it  about  the  house,  clinging  to 
his  wife  —  to  hear  her  singing  to  it  —  that  was 
intolerable,  but  he  remained  calm ;  when  he  felt 
fit  he  would  take  hold  of  the  matter;  Richarda 
was  not  a  pig-headed  woman. 

But  at  the  end  of  a  fortnight  he  was  less  sure 
of  some  things ;  from  day  to  day  he  watched, 
appalled  at  the  hold  this  boy  seemed  to  have 
upon  her. 

"  Say,  Dawson,  what  would  you  do  if  your 
wife  wanted  to  adopt  a  boy?  "  he  broke  out  one 
morning  in  the  midst  of  an  important  legal  dis- 
cussion. 

"  Say  it  again,"  said  Dawson,  "  and  say  it 
slow." 

48 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

"  Yes  —  but  what  would  you  ?  " 

"  Guess  I'd  adopt  a  girl  —  real  pretty  one." 

"  See  here,  Dawson  — " 

"  I'm  seeing.  But  situations  like  that  be- 
tween a  man  and  his  wife  would  be  puzzlers  for 
Solomon  in  all  his  glory.  A  woman  — " 

"  I  know.  But  my  wife  —  she's  not  an  ordi- 
nary woman,  Dawson." 

"  Never  met  one  that  was,  my  boy.  If  two  or 
three  of  them  just  would  be,  it  would  give  us  — 
well,  a  kind  of  rule  of  three  to  work  by." 

"But  this  isn't  a  joke.  You  see,  she's  got 
the  boy,  Dawson." 

Dawson  whistled.  "  Awkward  —  that,  isn't 
it?  Where'd  she  get  him?  " 

"  Don't  know." 

"  Parents,  or  any  trimmings  like  that  attached 
to  him?  " 

"  No  sign  of  any." 

Dawson  mused  a  while.  "  After  all,  Hom- 
frey,  I'm  not  sure  that  it  isn't  wise  for  a  man, 
when  he's  dealing  with  his  wife,  to  remember  that 
she  may  be  a  rational  being  —  from  some  point 
of  view  that's  not  intelligible  to  him,  of  course. 
Even  supposing  the  limit  —  that  you  had  to  keep 
this  child  — " 

"  Keep   the   child  !  "      Homfrey   started,  and 
went  back  to  his  office  unappeased. 
49 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

Keep  that  child  ?  —  in  his  home  ? 

He  spent  an  evening,  a  few  days  later,  in  tell- 
ing Richarda  the  story  of  his  dealings  with  the 
silent  couple  in  Hungary,  which  had  resulted 
in  his  sailing  home  with  all  the  evidence  in  its 
client's  favour  that  his  firm  could  desire.  The 
situation  between  the  old  pair  had  ultimately 
aroused  an  active  interest  in  him;  to  understand 
how  and  why  this  husband  and  wife  had  lived 
together  in  silence  for  thirty  years  provided  him 
with  a  problem  infinitely  more  intricate  than  the 
legal  knot  he  was  seeking  to  untie.  Naturally, 
they  had  ended  by  telling  him  everything,  at 
first  separately,  and  then  together,  until  sud- 
denly, in  one  breath  each  turned  in  hot  speech 
upon  the  other.  "  For  a  moment  they  stared  at 
each  other  like  two  graven  images,"  said  Hom- 
f rey.  "  You  see,  they  had  broken  their  vow 
never  to  speak  again  —  it  was  awfully  funny  — 
pathetic  too.  I  laughed,  and  they  had  to. 
There  didn't  seem  to  be  anything  else  to  do. 
And  that  was  the  end  of  the  Thirty  Years'  War. 
They  promised  if  they  ever  quarrelled  again  to 
send  for  me.  But  they  never  will.  They're  so 
thankful  to  be  able  to  be  friends  again,  and  to 
have  me  as  the  excuse.  Isn't  it  absurd  ?  " 

"  I  don't  know,"  said  Richarda.  "  After  all, 
50 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

their  lives  have  had  a  sort  of  distinction.  I'm 
not  sure  that  it  hasn't  paid  them.  This  is  the 
only  big  thing  that  ever  happened  to  them.  And 
think  what  a  luxury  talking  will  be  to  them  for 
the  rest  of  their  days.  And  their  position  among 
their  neighbours  !  —  fancy  being  pointed  out  as 
the  husband  and  wife  who  didn't  speak  for  thirty 
years.  It's  superb.  I'm  glad  they're  talking 
now,  but  I'm  so  glad  they  didn't  any  sooner." 

Homfrey  laughed.  "  That's  all  very  well, 
but  I  think  I  would  prefer  less  distinction  and 
more  commonplace  happiness.  And  by  the  way, 
Charda  —  that  reminds  me  —  about  that  boy. 
I  haven't  said  anything  about  it,  but  I  can't 
stand  it.  You  must  send  him  away.  He's  not 
a  means  of  grace  to  me,  whatever  he  may  be  to 
you.  I  like  you  to  be  amused,  but  — " 

"  Amused !  "  the  word  broke  from  Richarda ; 
she  stood  up. 

"  Come  here,  dear.  Don't  walk  off  like  that." 
Homfrey  caught  her  —  drew  her  down  to  his 
knee.  "  You  see,  dear,  the  child  does  not  be- 
long here.  No  family  can  successfully  assimi- 
late a  strange  graft  like  that.  But  I'm  not  a 
brute.  If  the  child  is  in  need  —  tell  me  some- 
thing about  him.  Where  did  you  get  him? 
Who  are  his  parents  ?  " 
51 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

Richarda  was  silent;  she  was  looking  at  the 
pattern  of  the  rug  —  she  had  never  liked  that 
shade  of  yellow  in  it. 

"  Charda,  why  don't  you  answer  me?  " 

"  You  asked  about  his  parents  —  yes."  She 
spoke  lightly.  "  Dear,  don't  let's  think  about 
them.  For  there's  nothing  to  tell.  Of  course 
no  other  woman  would  be  as  silly  as  I  am.  I'm 
afraid  I  like  to  do  queer  things,  Tim." 

"  Charda !  " 

"  Why  yes !  —  I  am  telling  you."  She 
stroked  his  hair  with  fingers  that  hardly  touched 
it,  but  she  did  not  look  at  him.  "  It  seems  so 
foolish  now  —  I  hardly  know  how  to  tell  you. 
A  woman  asked  me  to  take  him  —  she  knew 
nothing  of  me  except  that  I  was  what  she  called 
a  *  kind-hearted '  lady.  I  knew  nothing  of  her 
then,  and  I  know  nothing  now.  I  don't  even 
know  where  she  is.  She  wanted  me  to  take  him 
because  she  wanted  to  marry  a  man  who  must 
never  know  that  she  had  the  child."  Richarda's 
voice  was  as  even  as  a  straight  line.  "  She  had 
heard  of  me  through  Belle  —  Belle  Austin  who 
lived  with  us  when  we  were  first  married." 

"  Charda,  you  actually  mean  to  say  — " 

"  Yes."  She  slipped  off  his  knee  and  faced 
him  with  a  pretty  gesture.  "  I  plead  guilty  to 
52 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

being  the  silliest,  perversest  woman  that  ever 
stood  before  a  judge.  As  soon  as  I  knew  that 
child's  mother  didn't  want  him,  I  did.  And  I 
shall  always  want  him,  Tim."  Her  tone 
changed.  "  You've  never  said  No  to  me  yet. 
Don't  say  it  now.  You  mustn't.  He's  a  little 
forsaken  child.  You  must  not  take  him  away 
from  me.  He's  my  charge.  Tim,  you  mustn't." 

Her  voice  had  the  intensity  of  a  cry  now,  for 
Homfrey  had  risen,  his  face  stern  with  the  look 
that  she  had  dreaded;  they  stood  confronting 
each  other. 

Homfrey  looked  at  her  a  moment  —  then  he 
sat  down  and  lit  another  cigar. 

She  sat  down  too  and  began  poking  the  fire; 
she  was  glad  of  the  occupation  as  a  refuge  for 
her  trembling  hands. 

There  was  a  long  silence.  But  at  last  Hom- 
frey said :  "  I  want  to  be  fair  to  you,  Charda. 
You  are  a  woman  of  the  noblest  impulses,  and 
because  of  that  I  realised  long  ago  that  you  were 
apt  to  give  me  many  surprises.  But  I  never 
supposed  that  I  should  be  driven  to  question 
your  affection  for  me." 

"  Tim ! " 

"  I  can't  see  it  otherwise.  This  child  disturbs 
my  feeling  in  regard  to  my  home.  You  under- 
53 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

stand  that,  and  yet  you  persist  in  wishing  to 
keep  him  here."  He  had  meant  to  argue  this 
matter  as  impersonally  as  he  would  a  case  in 
court,  but  Richarda  was  his  wife  —  he  weakened. 
"  Sweetheart  "—  he  lifted  her  face  to  his  — "  I 
think  you  don't  understand  marriage  yet.  A 
woman  loves  so  differently  from  a  man  — "  he 
paused,  for  into  her  eyes  there  came  a  look  that 
somehow  wrenched  his  heart,  but  he  thought  his 
own  emotion  the  cause  of  that  — "  Well,  there  it 
is.  When  I  think  of  my  home,  that  means  you, 
Charda.  And  now  you  see  — "  he  spoke  as  one 
treading  carefully  — "  into  my  home,  sacred  to 
me  as  your  shrine,  you  bring  an  alien  element  — 
a  child  in  no  way  kin  to  you  or  to  me  —  not 
even  honourably  — " 

"  Don't,  Tim  !  " 

"  But  I  must."  He  spoke  firmly.  "  You  say 
you  know  nothing  of  the  mother.  Did  she  tell 
you  nothing  of  the  father?  " 

"  I  didn't  ask  to  know  anything." 

"  Charda !  And  yet  you  take  this  boy  into 
your  home  —  you  make  him  as  your  own  child, 
and  you  know  nothing  as  to  the  woman  who  hap- 
pened to  be  his  mother  except  the  fact  of  the 
boy,  and  when  it  comes  to  the  question  of  a 
father  —  well,  the  father  of  this  boy,  I  sup- 
pose — " 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

She  was  on  her  feet,  her  hands  gripped  to- 
gether. 

"  No,  I  don't  know.  And  I  don't  want  to 
know.  What  have  I  to  do  with  things  like  that? 
All  I  do  know,  and  all  I  ever  will  know  is  that 
little  Jack  came  to  me  —  I  didn't  seek  him, 
Tim  — "  her  voice  quivered  — "  but  now  he  is 
mine,  my  charge,  my  responsibility.  I  can't  es- 
cape that  —  it  has  been  laid  upon  me.  He  is 
mine  to  stand  for,  and  I  will  never  give  him  up. 
If  I  could  — "  the  tears  were  in  her  eyes  — "it 
would  be  no  proof  of  my  love  for  you,  Tim." 
For  a  moment  she  could  not  speak;  then  she 
added :  "  That  little  child  has  been  laid  upon 
me,  because  he  was  forsaken,  and  I  took  him  in. 
I  will  not  cast  him  out." 

Homfrey  tossed  his  cigar  into  the  fire;  then 
he  waited,  turning  his  hands  to  the  warmth  of 
the  blaze;  the  long,  delicate  fingers  expressed  a 
passion  that  was  not  revealed  in  his  face.  Yet 
when  he  spoke  his  voice  was  calm.  "  Very  well, 
Charda.  You  will  keep  the  child.  I  see  that. 
I  see  that  it  is  quite  useless  for  me  to  meet  you 
either  with  argument  or  entreaty.  There  is 
however  just  one  point  I  should  like  to  suggest. 
Does  it  not  occur  to  you  that  we  might  yet  have 
a  child  of  our  own?  " 

55 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

Her  eyes  went  away  from  his. 

"  Have  you  thought  of  that  ?  " 

"  Yes." 

"  Oh,  you  have !  And  yet  you  would  like  to 
bring  up  your  child  —  my  child  — "  Homf rey's 
voice  hardened  — "  in  the  same  home,  on  the 
same  footing  with  this  child,  the  son  of  an  aban- 
doned girl,  and  of  a  father  —  well,  there  it  is ! 
Perhaps  it  is  just  as  well  for  your  peace  of  mind 
that  you  know  as  little  as  you  do  of  him." 
Homf  rey  laughed  sarcastically ;  he  was  not  look- 
ing at  Richarda ;  he  did  not  see  her  shrink. 
"  But  it's  interesting  blood,  isn't  it?  "  he  asked 
in  a  carefully  restrained  tone  — "  to  bring  into 
our  home.  And  blood  has  a  way  of  telling  in 
the  long  run  —  a  way  that  is  sometimes  full  of 
surprises.  It  is  not  certain  that  environment 
can  do  all  that  you  expect  of  it.  Some  day,  in 
spite  of  all  that  you  may  have  done  for  him,  the 
weakness  of  his  mother,  the  viciousness  of  his 
father—" 

"  Wait !  "  said  Richarda  —  she  was  looking  at 
him,  and  there  was  that  strange  expression  again 
—  that  expression  which  baffled  him ;  — "  I  deny 
anything  evil  in  Jack.  It  is  all  good.  And  he 
will  be  good.  He  will  not  be  able  to  escape 
that." 

56 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

Homfrey  got  up  and  went  slowly  towards  her. 
"  Charda,  there  is  something  here  that  I  do  not 
understand.  And  I  must  understand.  I  must 
know  why  you  have  taken  the  case  of  this  child 
so  extraordinarily  to  heart !  " 

There  seemed  no  way  of  escape  —  for  a  mo- 
ment she  faced  the  horror  of  telling  him  the 
truth  —  she  faced  the  unutterable  degradation 
to  him  and  to  her  of  admitting  him  to  that 
ruined  sanctuary  of  her  faith  where  she  had  be- 
gun again  a  pitiful  upbuilding  of  her  dreams. 

But  in  the  instant  that  she  felt  her  weakness 
most  great,  she  grew  strong;  she  looked  up  at 
Homfrey  unafraid.  "  You  must  trust  me,  Tim. 
I  have  told  you  just  how  that  child  came  to  me. 
Perhaps  —  at  any  other  time  —  it  would  not 
have  affected  me  so.  But  it  seemed  that  —  just 
now  —  it  was  the  time  for  me  to  do  —  a  thing 
like  this.  I  did  not  want  to  do  it.  I  can  be  a 
hard,  selfish  woman.  But  I  must  not  be  that  — 
now.  Because  —  Oh  Tim,  don't  you  under- 
stand? " 

He  looked  at  her  bewildered  —  her  eyes  were 
like  stars. 

"  Charda,  what  is  it?  No,  I  don't  know.  I 
don't  understand." 

Her  voice  hardly  reached  him :     "  Because  — 
for  my  child,  for  yours,  Tim  — " 
57 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

"  Charda !  "  He  bent  over  her,  his  heart  in 
a  sudden  tumult  of  tenderness  of  which  he  hardly 
understood  the  meaning;  the  passion  he  had 
known  by  the  name  of  Love  rose  in  that  moment 
to  heights  he  had  never  suspected  within  him- 
self. 

Her  hands  crept,  fluttering,  to  his ;  he  put  his 
arms  about  her  with  a  gesture  all-protecting,  but 
he  did  not  kiss  her  —  something  held  him  apart 
from  her. 

"Don't  you  see?"  she  whispered  at  last  — 
"  It's  because  my  child  —  your  child  —  will  have 
me  and  you  —  and  this  other  —  if  I  fail  him, 
perhaps  my  child  will  have  to  stand  alone  some 
day  —  suppose  there  was  no  one  to  help  him. 
You  must  let  me  be  good,  Tim,  in  my  own  queer 
way.  Don't  try  to  understand  me.  You  never 
could.  But  never  say  to  me  again  that  I  don't 
love  you.  Because  — " 

"  Charda !  "  he  cried,  beside  himself  — "  Don't 
look  at  me  like  that.  I  can't  bear  it.  My 
darling — "  he  bent  and  kissed  her,  for  now  he 
must. 

But  in  the  days  of  strange  dismay  that  fol- 
lowed for  Richarda  she  owned  to  herself,  that 
deep  beneath  all  her  subterfuges  —  beneath  all 
the  glamour  of  pose  and  self-deception,  there 
58 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

had  been  fixed  in  her  the  belief  that  Homfrey 
could  not  fail  to  discover  from  her  the  truth 
about  the  child.  He  must  discover  it ;  it  was  an 
outrage  against  her  that  he  should  not. 

Yet  the  days  passed,  and  she  remained  silent. 

But  that  could  not  endure. 

She  waited,  in  anticipatory  hope  and  dread 
of  some  sudden  crisis  which  should  set  her  free 
of  her  secret. 


59 


CHAPTER  V 

Young  Richard  Homfrey  was  born  the  follow- 
ing June;  for  several  days  after  his  arrival  it 
seemed  doubtful  whether  his  mother  would  live 
to  know  of  the  event.  And  when  the  actual 
crisis  was  passed,  a  dangerous  torpor  settled 
upon  her;  day  after  day  she  lay  silent,  with  her 
eyes  "  full  of  nothing  "  the  nurse  said.  Even 
the  baby  failed  to  stir  her,  though  when  she  first 
felt  its  lips  at  her  breast  she  shivered  and  turned 
her  face  from  it. 

"  Bring  its  cradle  in  here,  and  wash  it  and 
dress  it  here,"  the  doctor  said  sharply.  "  The 
noise  ?  —  that's  what  I  want.  The  more  it  cries 
the  better." 

But  Richarda  merely  bore  its  presence  in  her 
room  patiently,  though  once  she  asked  with  wan 
apprehensiveness :  "  Do  they  always  cry  like 
that?  " 

She  had  not  yet  related  the  child  to  herself. 

When  she  heard  it  cry  no  dart  pierced  her  heart 

because  it  was  her  child  who  cried.     It  belonged 

as  yet  to  that  part  of  a  woman's  life  which  she 

60 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

had  determined  to  ignore  —  that  part  involved 
with  the  problem  called  Love  —  a  problem  in 
which  she  had  no  interest. 

Yet  Richarda  was  thinking  as  she  lay  there, 
with  her  eyes,  to  the  nurse's  ken,  so  "  full  of 
nothing."  She  was  thinking  what  a  strange 
place  the  world  was  for  a  woman  of  her  sort  to 
be  in.  She  felt  herself  sick  of  the  disease  of 
life,  for  there  seemed  to  her  to  be  no  meaning  in 
her  suffering.  Purity,  impurity  —  love,  lust  — 
there  was  no  clear  line  of  division  between  the 
one  and  the  other. 

The  experience  through  which  she  had  just 
gone  was  like  a  nightmare  in  her  memory,  yet  it 
was  one  which  was  supposed  to  glorify  a  woman 
and  set  halo  of  Madonna  about  her  head.  But 
what  was  there  in  pain  —  pain  that  tortured, 
maddened,  that  cried  at  last  aloud  upon  the  bit- 
ten lips  —  what  was  there  in  that  that  dignified, 
ennobled  ? 

How  horrified  these  people  about  her  would  be 
if  they  should  hear  her  talk  as  she  was  thinking ! 
But  she  was  sorry  for  that  baby  —  it  had  come 
into  a  world  of  artifice  and  subterfuge. 

"  Poor  little  child,"  she  said  one  day  as  she 
looked   at  it,  "  You  came  because  you  had  to 
come,  I  suppose.     You  and  I  couldn't  help  that. 
It's  part  of  the  puzzle." 
61 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

But  these  were  merely  Richarda's  superficial 
thoughts  —  underneath,  something  was  raging 
of  which  she  was  afraid  as  she  lay  so  still,  her 
soft  brown  eyes  so  dense. 

This  then,  was  the  experience  that  girl  had 
gone  through,  alone,  dishonoured. 

This  was  the  burden  the  woman  had,  through 
all  time,  carried  for  the  sake  of  the  man. 

"  Bring  me  a  Bible,"  she  said  unexpectedly  to 
the  nurse.  "  No,  I  don't  know  just  where  you 
will  find  one.  You  had  better  ask  Anna  —  she's 
religious,  I  think." 

Yet  when  she  had  it  she  let  it  lie  for  a  long 
time  unopened.  Then  she  took  it  up,  and 
turned  to  the  book  of  Genesis ;  she  wanted  to  see 
just  what  sort  of  curse  it  was  that  had  been 
pronounced  upon  man  and  woman. 

She  sighed,  as  she  laid  it  down;  after  a  long 
silence  she  said  to  the  nurse :  "  The  man  who 
wrote  that  understood  some  things  very  well." 

"  I  suppose  so,"  said  the  woman  vaguely ;  she 
was  disquieted  by  an  impression  that  there  was 
something  not  exactly  pious  in  her  patient's  re- 
mark. She  leaned  over  to  take  the  book  away, 
but  Richarda  put  her  hand  on  it.  "  You  may 
leave  it,"  she  said.  But  when  she  was  once  more 
alone  Richarda  picked  up  the  book  and  dropped 
62 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

it  to  the  floor.  The  whole  scheme  of  things  was 
on  trial  in  her  mind  as  a  system  of  protection 
for  the  man. 

When  Homfrey  came  into  the  room,  and  hung 
over  the  child  and  her, —  tender,  adoring,  it 
took  all  her  tensest  powers  of  self-control  to  lie 
there,  acquiescent  to  his  touch,  the  while  her 
soul,  white-hot,  called  his  to  judgment. 

Children ! —  the  world  was  full  of  them ;  be- 
cause men  loved  them? 

The  horror  of  it  —  that  she  should  have  come 

to  the  asking  of  questions  such  as  these she, 

who  had  entered  so  light  of  heart  upon  the  rose- 
leaf  path  of  marriage,  as  innocent  as  the  babe  at 
her  breast.  And  she  was  young  —  she  wanted 
happiness,  the  happiness  that  needed  no  fine  spin- 
ning of  spiritual  definition  —  love,  laughter, 
caresses,  the  pretty  pleasures  of  life.  And  in- 
stead, the  Book  of  Fate  had  opened,  and  revealed 
to  her  this  way  of  thorn  and  tear. 

Unknowing,  she  was  struggling  with  the  bit- 
ter mystery  of  vicarious  sacrifice.  Day  after 
day,  the  cry  was  upon  her  lips :  If  it  be  pos- 
sible let  this  cup  pass  from  me;  she  would  have 
scoffed  had  she  been  charged  with  belief  in  the 
doctrine  of  the  Lamb  of  God  slain  for  the  sins 
of  the  world,  yet  she  had  entered  upon  the  liv- 
63 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

ing  out  of  that  mystery  in  her  own  experience. 
But  of  this  she  had  as  yet  no  knowledge. 

She  grew  more  and  more  nervous ;  each  day 
she  said  less,  for  the  thing  she  was  afraid  of  say- 
ing waited  upon  the  edge  of  her  lips ;  some  time 
when  she  was  not  watching  she  would  cry  aloud. 
There  was  a  terrible  fascination  in  the  sound  of 
it:  Tim,  did  you  know  that  Jack  is  your  little 
boy? 

Sometimes  she  awoke  with  a  start  in  the  mid- 
dle of  the  night,  with  the  feeling  that  the  words 
were  staring  at  her  from  the  darkness  where 
someone  had  uttered  them  aloud ; —  it  was  little 
wonder  that  her  convalescence  was  a  matter  of 
uncertainty. 

When  Homf  rey  was  with  her,  her  torture  was 
greatest ;  then,  like  little  demons,  those  scorching 
words  danced  wickedly  upon  her  parched  im- 
agination :  Tim  —  Jack  —  Your  little  boy  — 
nearer  and  nearer  they  whirled  until  her  fear  be- 
came at  times  so  unendurable  that  she  slipped  in- 
to unconsciousness. 

But  she  was  not  to  escape.  One  evening  as 
Homfrey  sat  reading  beside  her,  his  hand  close 
over  hers,  she  began  suddenly  to  sob.  "  Don't 
let  me  speak,  Tim!  Don't! — Don't  let  me 
speak.  Hold  me  tight  —  I'm  so  afraid.  Tim, 
64 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

I  mustn't  —  I  mustn't.  Don't  listen  —  Oh 
Tim,  don't  listen." 

It  was  a  cry  agonising  to  hear;  in  terror  he 
gathered  her  into  his  arms.  She  was  fighting 
some  force  that  seemed  to  tear  her  —  she  held 
her  thin  hand  over  her  lips  —  her  eyes  were  wide 
and  dark.  When  at  last  he  laid  her  down  she 
was  appallingly  quiet ;  the  soft  rings  of  her  hair 
were  wet. 

She  was  hysterical,  the  doctor  said  frowning. 
In  her  weak  condition  that  was  inevitable;  as 
soon  as  possible  they  must  get  her  away  — 
this  kind  of  thing  would  never  do. 

But  Richarda  knew  —  she  could  never  be 
"  got  away  "  from  this. 

"  By  the  way,  Dawson,  I  wish  you'd  come  over 
to  see  my  wife,"  said  Homfrey  a  few  days  latter. 
"  She  likes  you  and  she  hasn't  seen  a  soul  yet. 
We've  been  afraid  to  let  her,  but  I'm  getting 
more  afraid  of  not  letting  her." 

"  All  right,  my  boy.  I  don't  blame  her  for 
getting  the  blues  if  you've  been  keeping  her  shut 
up  to  the  society  of  a  baby  all  this  time.  I  never 
could  understand  how  women  stand  so  much  of 
that.  Marriage  must  be  full  of  disconcerting 
surprises  for  a  woman.  Still,  it's  kind  of  hard 
on  a  man  too.  I  remember  what  a  blow  it  was  to 
65 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

me  —  I  had  been  sailing  on  the  sea  of  matri- 
monial bliss  about  three  weeks  when  I  went  home 
one  night  and  said  to  my  wife  with  all  the  as- 
surance of  faith :  "  Give  me  the  paper,  dear." 
And  she  just  looked  up  at  me:  "Yes,  dear, 
presently,  when  I'm  through  with  it." 

"  Lord !  I  knew  on  the  spot  that  marriage 
was  a  darn  swindle.  I  said :  "  Sarah!  "  but 
she  kept  right  on.  I  went  out  and  got  my 
spade  —  we'd  been  playing  that  we  were  spend- 
ing our  honeymoon  making  a  garden  —  and 
gave  the  incipient  vegetables  such  an  oration  on 
the  subject  of  marriage  as  a  man-trap,  as  would 
have  made  my  reputation  if  I'd  only  been  on  the 
platform  instead  of  in  the  potato-patch." 

Homfrey  laughed;  he  enjoyed  Dawson's  ex- 
hibitions of  himself  as  an  example  of  domestic 
depravity ;  no  man  was  safer  from  misunder- 
standing. As  the  office  scrub-woman  had  said 
in  an  awed  whisper  only  the  day  before :  "  Mr. 
Dawson,  Sir?  Why,  I  guess  he's  most  as  good 
as  God." 

When  Dawson  walked  lightly  into  Richarda's 
room,  his  face  wore  its  usual  easy  smile  —  a 
smile  which  held  its  place  in  spite  of  the  pang 
he  felt  when  he  saw  how  pitifully  thin  and  white 
she  was.  "  Homfrey  told  you  that  last  esca- 
66 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

pade  of  old  Whitmarsh's  ?  "  he  asked  casually 
as  he  shook  hands  with  her.  "  Is  that  a  baby  ? 
Bless  my  soul !  doesn't  it  make  you  feel  queer 
to  think  you'd  never  be  able  to  pick  it  out  if 
it  got  mixed  up  with  a  dozen  others?  That's 
what  I  always  think  when  I  see  other  people's 
babies.  Better  tag  this  fellow  —  there's  a  dif- 
ference in  tags  if  not  in  babies." 

Richarda  smiled  —  a  faint  little  ghost  of  a 
smile. 

"  Well,  about  old  Whitmarsh,  now.  You  see 
he  was  at  the  play  the  other  night  with  his  son 
—  he  doesn't  go  very  often  —  he's  been  a  mil- 
lion-maker so  long  he'd  be  apt  to  sit  there  figur- 
ing out  what  the  price  of  his  seat  would  be  worth 
if  he'd  put  the  money  into  Shark's  Tooth  and 
then  worked  the  proposition  his  way.  But  this 
time  he  really  was  there,  squandering  money 
like  a  man  on  a  thousand  a  year,  and  by  and  by, 
his  son  who'd  been  waiting  his  chance,  said  care- 
fully :  '  See  that  girl  in  the  chorus,  third  to 
the  left?'  You  bet  old  Whitmarsh  had. 
'  We're  thinking  of  getting  married,'  said 
Sammy  Junior,  '  but  we  thought  we'd  like  you 
to  know  about  it  first.' — '  I  see.  Yes,  that's 
quite  a  girl,  my  son.' 

"  Now  it  seems  strange,  doesn't  it ? —  that  any 
67 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

son  of  old  Whitmarsh's  should  have  been  inno- 
cent enough  to  let  the  old  boy  get  wind  of  the 
proposition.  For  Samuel  Senior  had  never, 
since  he  was  born,  heard  of  anybody  wanting 
anything  without  immediately  beginning  to 
want  it  himself.  The  natural  upshot  in  this 
instance  was  that  when  young  Samuel  went  home 
to  dinner  a  few  evenings  later,  Mrs.  Samuel  Sen- 
ior met  him  at  the  door  and  said :  '  Oh  Sammy, 
let  me  be  a  mother  to  you  !' 

"  And  now  old  Whitmarsh  is  a  disgusting 
sight.  He's  all  over  the  place  with  her,  with  a 
Behold  Me  and  the  Bride  that  is  Mine  air  that's 
positively  nauseating." 

The  two  men  laughed  and  talked  lightly,  in- 
tent upon  amusing  Richarda  without  making 
any  demand  upon  her. 

She  lay  there,  content.  It  was  good  to  hear 
Dawson's  voice  again ;  one  naturally  trusted 
Dawson. —  Trusted  —  she  hated  that  word ;  she 
shut  her  eyes  wearily  —  the  simplest  thought 
was  full  of  unhappy  suggestion  to  her. 

When  she  opened  them  again,  there,  close  to 
her  bed,  little  Jack  stood  in  his  long  white  night- 
gown —  quite  still.  When  his  eyes  met  hers 
his  figure  straightened  —  his  tangled  head  lifted 
—  there  was  a  quick  flame  of  anger  in  his  face. 
68 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

"  Lady  not  want  Jack  any  more,"  he  said  in 
loud,  accusing  tones.  "  Lady  got  new  little 
boy.  Go  away,  Jack  —  go  away ! "  He 
turned  upon  himself,  and  beat  his  breast  with 
passionate  hands. 

With  a  hot  exclamation  Homfrey  started 
from  his  seat;  he  would  have  swept  the  child 
like  chaff  from  the  room.  But  Dawson's  hand 
upon  his  arm  held  him.  "  Leave  them  alone, 
Tim,"  he  said  quietly.  For  he  had  seen  the 
look  in  Richarda's  eyes. 

"  Oh  Jack,"  she  murmured  in  tender  mother- 
tone  —  "  Come  here,  Jack.  See  —  up  here,  be- 
side me." 

But  the  child  held  back.  He  was  struggling 
against  his  tears  now,  for  at  the  sound  of  her 
faint  voice  his  anger  had  vanished  —  this  was 
his  own  "  Lady  " —  she  had  not  forgotten  him. 
And  yet  Nettie  had  said  — 

"  Ah !  "  It  was  Nettie's  voice  at  the  door, 
suppressed  in  wrath ;  her  charge  had  escaped 
her  at  the  worst  possible  moment,  considering 
Homfrey 's  stringent  admonitions. 

But   Dawson   motioned   her   away,   and   even 

Homfrey,  to  whom  she  directed  an   appealing 

eye-brow,  affirmed  her  dismissal.     For  the  child 

was  beside  Richarda  on  the  bed  now ;  she  had  her 

69 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

arms  around  him  and  the  colour  had  come  into 
her  face.  She  was  whispering  to  him  those 
happy  nothings  which  were  balm  to  his  wounded 
heart. 

By  and  by,  Homfrey  and  Dawson  slipped 
silently  down-stairs,  for  Richarda  had  fallen 
asleep,  and  the  child  lay  cuddled  close  to  her, 
his  moist  little  hand  fast  in  hers. 

And  yet,  not  once  during  her  illness,  had 
she  asked  to  see  Jack;  that  had  been  a  thought 
full  of  comfort  to  Homfrey.  In  time,  he  ar- 
gued, she  would  realise  that  her  love  for  her 
own  child  must  necessarily  exclude  the  indul- 
gence of  such  an  impulse  as  the  harbouring  of 
this  alien,  however  generous  it  might  be.  Heaven 
only  knew  what  a  misery  it  had  been  to  him  to 
have  to  endure  the  boy  in  the  house  all  these 
months,  but  he  had  believed  the  reward  of  his 
tolerance  nigh. 

But  if  Richarda  had  not  asked  to  see  Jack, 
it  was  not  because  her  thoughts  were  stilled  in 
regard  to  him  —  they  were  in  tumult.  She  had 
wished  with  all  her  soul  that  Homfrey  would 
send  him  away  while  he  had  the  opportunity, 
without  ever  again  mentioning  him  to  her;  day 
after  day  she  stormed  to  herself  in  the  silence 
that  she  never  wanted  to  see  him  again  —  that 
70 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

she  never  would ;  she  demanded,  of  whom  she 
knew  not,  that  her  responsibility  for  him  should 
be  ended.  Once  when  she  heard  his  voice  in  the 
distance,  she  took  her  bit  of  a  handkerchief  and 
tore  it  into  wicked  looking  shreds  —  she  was 
glad  to  be  cruel  to  something. 

And  yet  this  time  came,  when  little  Jack's 
head  was  pillowed  once  more  upon  her  arm.  For 
the  eternal  mystery  of  love  worked  its  miracle 
anew  in  her  heart.  When  she  looked  and  saw 
the  pathetic  figure  and  heard  the  angry  cry  of 
desolation,  all  that  was  noblest  in  her  nature 
rose  as  if  in  response  to  a  heavenly  call.  She 
looked,  and  there  was  Tim's  child,  alone,  again 
forsaken ;  it  was  to  her  as  if  she  had  turned 
her  soul  against  Tim  in  his  greatest  need. 

But  it  was  not  until  long  afterwards  that  she 
understood  that  affection  for  her  own  child  had 
been  denied  to  her  until  she  opened  her  heart 
again  to  this  impulse  which  seemed  on  the  face 
of  it,  fantastic  and  unwarrantable. 

Late  that  night  Homfrey  came  in  on  careful 
foot,  and  looked  at  them  together;  his  thoughts 
were  very  bitter.  It  was  no  use  —  he  must  give 
up  hoping  that  her  mood  towards  this  child 
would  change.  The  whole  thing  was  beyond  his 
comprehension,  but  the  fact  was  as  it  was,  and 
71 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

so  he  must  accept  it.  As  a  dispenser  of  legal 
advice  he  came  into  closest  mental  contact  with 
men  and  women  who  refused,  with  every  variety 
of  obstinacy,  to  accept  the  inevitable  fact.  He 
listened  to  them  often,  touched  with  contempt 
for  his  kind,  but  he  was  far  too  keen  to  be 
misled  into  believing  that  because  he  saw  the 
follies  of  his  clients,  he  himself  was  free  from 
taint  of  them.  He  knew  as  none  other  did,  that 
inner  Homfrey,  who  watched  appreciative  of  its 
artistic  merit  the  public  performance  of  the 
outer  Homfrey,  who  did  a  good  act,  or  a  bad 
one;  who  was  swayed  one  moment  by  a  weak- 
ness, and  uplifted  the  next  by  a  divine  impulse ; 
who  was  as  God  now,  and  as  the  Devil  then. 

The  Great  Play  fascinated  him ;  he  loved  to 
feel  beneath  his  touch  a  client  whose  flimsy 
frailties  of  character  he  manipulated  at  his  will, 
for  he  would  go  through  life  lightly,  and  these 
experiences  added  to  its  drollery.  He  did  not 
ignore  its  tragedies,  but  they  were  so  often 
merely  comedies  acted  backward.  And  even 
when  they  came  in  all  their  royal  purple  of  heart- 
break and  disaster,  they  were,  if  rightly  under- 
stood, but  as  the  ultimate  beauty  of  the  discord- 
ant note  which  obscured  for  the  moment  the 
splendour  of  the  climax  towards  which  the  music 
72 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

strove.  The  real  tragedies  of  life  were  rooted 
in  the  torment  of  those  questions  which  had 
descended  from  one  generation  to  another  un- 
answered, unanswerable  —  forever  persistent  in 
the  soul  of  man.  But  life  would  be  a  dull  spec- 
tacle without  them. 

It  was  because  of  them  that  a  man  must 
laugh. 

Homfrey  had  married  Richarda  with  his  eyes 
wide  open  —  with  no  special  pre-determination 
of  loyalty  towards  her.  That  would  be  as  it 
happened;  the  man  who  pledged  himself  to  be 
faithful  to  a  woman  "  until  death  do  us  part " 
was  a  fool  if  he  fancied  that  he  did  so  without 
inevitable  reservation. 

He  had  married  Richarda  because  he  adored 
her,  because  through  her  he  had  sounded  the 
gamut  of  the  lover's  emotions.  It  was  the  great 
experience;  he  had  feared  quite  frankly,  as  he 
saw  one  ideal  after  another  taking  flight,  that 
it  was  not  for  him.  He  was  a  fastidious  man, 
and  he  had  looked  with  a  disgust  that  left  noth- 
ing unprobed,  into  the  gulfs  where  he  had 
watched  one  associate  after  another  sink.  He 
had  gone  to  many  a  wedding,  and  wondered 
what  the  effect  would  be  if  he  should  tell  the 
bride  what  he  knew  of  the  man  at  her  side. 
73 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

Probably  nothing  —  in  nine  cases  out  of  ten,  be- 
cause the  girl,  for  financial  reasons  or  others, 
required  a  bridegroom ;  up  here  at  the  altar  or 
down  there  in  the  gulfs  human  nature  was  of 
the  same  substance;  the  apparent  difference  was 
largely  a  matter  of  veneer. 

Homfrey  was  fastidious,  therefore  not 
tempted  in  the  common  way.  There  were  cer- 
tain episodes  of  his  youth  that  he  remembered 
with  distaste,  but  he  remembered  too,  that  posi- 
tive control  of  a  temperament  like  his  was  a 
matter  of  patience  and  experience.  His  bril- 
liant imagination,  which  would  have  made  of 
picturesque  intensity  the  dullest  life  in  which  his 
lot  might  have  been  cast,  spared  him  nothing 
when  he  came  to  the  question  of  the  woman ;  the 
fabric  of  his  dreams  was  infinitely  more  dan- 
gerous in  the  subtlety  of  its  tempting  to  this 
man,  than  the  flesh  and  blood  coveted  by  men 
whose  souls  perished  in  the  gulfs  into  whose 
foul  depths  he  had  looked  only  to  loathe. 

As  to  marriage,  he  had  argued  that  a  man 
had  surely  nothing  to  gain  by  'it  in  return  for 
what  he  would  lose;  he  scoffed  at  the  idea  of 
such  thrall  for  himself.  He  loved  his  kind  as 
an  artist  his  model,  and  it  merely  amused  him 
to  picture  himself  pledged  to  the  study  of  one 
74 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

type  "  so  long  as  ye  both  shall  live."  There 
had  been  several  women  whom  it  would  have  in- 
terested him  to  marry,  but  in  each  case  he  had 
decided  to  preserve  his  devotion  in  a  state  of 
casuistical  inconclusiveness ;  however  free  he 
might  be  determined  to  feel  himself,  he  would 
inevitably  be  hampered  by  marriage  in  the  ac- 
quiring of  those  new  experiences  which  were 
always  in  wait  for  him. 

He  was  a  man  so  much  sought  after,  to  whom 
so  much  was  offered,  that  it  would  not  have  been 
strange  had  he,  especially  when  alone  with  men, 
paraded  the  air  of  exhausted  cynicism  regard- 
ing women  apt  to  be  the  pose  of  the  type  of 
man  he  was  commonly  considered  to  be.  He 
never  had.  He  could  have  made  the  stories  of 
most  men  look  small,  but  that  would  have  been 
at  the  expense  of  some  woman ;  a  quixotic  sense 
of  honour  held  him  silent.  For  men  and  wo- 
men alike  were  caught  in  the  same  great  net,  and 
were  victims  of  one  flesh  and  one  blood ;  the  ass 
who  brayed  loudly  that  woman  was  this  or  that, 
but  called  attention  to  the  length  of  his  ears. 
The  son  of  the  mother  —  the  daughter  of  the 
father  —  in  the  veins  of  each  ran  the  mighty 
current  which  was  life,  and  neither  male  nor 
female. 

75 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

So  Homfrey  philosophised  and  went  his  way 
serene,  until  one  night  there  shone  in,  through 
the  fog  of  all  his  theorising,  a  star  unknown  to 
him  —  the  face  of  Richarda ;  and  the  heavens 
and  the  earth  were  new  created  for  him. 

Yet,  true  to  his  temperament,  he  analysed 
himself  as  lover  with  a  completeness  of  detach- 
ment that  left  no  weakness  unnoted,  no  mystery 
in  his  heart,  so  far  as  he  had  sight,  unscanned. 

She  was  the  one  woman  in  a  whole  world  of 
women ! —  he  thrilled  at  the  sound  of  her  name 
on  his  lips. 

The  one  woman? — For  how  long? — who 
should  say? 

That  was  for  them  together  to  prove.  "  Love 
—  the  most  delusive,  the  most  cruel,  the  most 
unstable,  the  least  pure  experience  the  heart  of 
man  can  know  — "  so  he  wrote  to  Dawson  on  his 
wedding  morning. 

He  was  posing  —  of  course.  He  never,  con- 
sciously, did  anything  else.  It  was  his  perpet- 
ual change  of  pose  that  gave  the  dash  of  red 
he  loved  in  his  life. 

To  explain  all  this  to  Richarda,  would  have 

been,  from  his  point  of  view,  most  evilly  to  mar 

the  bloom  for  which,  in  her,  clear  vision  of  life 

as  it  was,  would  be  no   compensation.     There 

76 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

were  thoughts  which  were  his  as  a  matter  of 
course,  but  which  were  not  for  her.  In  the  same 
way,  there  were  dark  spots  in  his  life  from 
knowledge  of  which  it  was  as  much  his  duty  to 
protect  her,  as  from  a  blow.  For  she  was  the 
woman  he  loved. 

And  at  the  end  of  two  years,  she  was  still  the 
woman  he  loved.  "  And  behold  I  shew  you  a 
mystery  " —  he  remembered  that  now  as  the  be- 
ginning of  a  verse  his  grandmother  had  taught 
him  in  those  petticoated  days  when  he  had  re- 
cited his  Sunday  texts  with  an  unctuousness  of 
inflection  which  gave  her  high  faith  as  to  the 
calling  that  should  be  his. 

But  the  mystery  as  it  confronted  him  now 
was  not  the  ancient  elusive  mystery  of  immor- 
tality caught  by  the  hem  of  its  heavenly  gar- 
ment in  the  iron-handed  grasp  of  theological 
dogma  — it  was  that  of  mortality  —  of  man 
and  his  heart,  forever  changing,  forever  un- 
changed. 

Upstairs,  the  child  cried  suddenly.  Homfrey 
breathed  deep ;  his  lips  tightened ;  the  whole  boy- 
ish figure  braced  itself  unconsciously. 

"  My  boy !  " 


77 


CHAPTER  VI 

The  years  of  Jack's  childhood  seemed  to  Ri- 
charda  afterwards  to  have  passed  in  a  dream. 
They  were  quiet  years,  marked  principally  by 
Homfrey's  steady  advance  in  professional  posi- 
tion ;  the  home  life  was  undoubtedly  "  happy  " 
in  that  it  proceeded  without  friction ;  the  petty 
irritations  of  ordinary  domestic  felicity  were  un- 
known to  Homfrey.  It  was  not  to  be  expected 
that  he  should  comprehend  the  skill  needed  to 
produce  results  that  appeared  inevitable.  He 
said  once  to  Dawson  that  other  women  could 
surely  manage  as  Richarda  did,  if  they  spent  as 
much  time  on  their  hom.es  as  on  their  clubs  and 
kindred  outside  interests. 

"  Oh  no,  they  couldn't,"  said  Dawson.  "  Be- 
cause if  they  could  they  would." 

"  I  daresay,"  said  Homfrey  slowly ;  he  was 
thinking  what  a  difference  there  must  be  between 
his  emotions  and  Dawson's  as  evidenced  by  the 
difference  between  the  women  they  had  married. 

The  children  grew  apace,  little  Dick  becom- 
ing the  inseparable  playmate  of  Jack.  There 
78 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

came  a  time  when  Homfrey  resented  less,  per- 
haps, the  infliction  of  this  strange  child  upon 
his  home  life,  because  he  recognised  the  neces- 
sity of  suitable  companionship  for  Dick,  and 
like  every  other  parent  he  was  doubtful  of  the 
moral  qualities  of  the  "  boy  next  door."  He 
was  still  convinced  that  in  time,  in  spite  of  all 
that  Richarda  might  do  for  him,  Jack's  blood 
would  tell  heavily  against  him,  but  at  present, 
under  the  best  and  most  protective  influences, 
he  was  probably  as  good  a  companion  as  Dick 
could  have.  The  devotion  of  the  older  boy  to 
the  younger  was  beyond  question. 

It  was  natural  that  the  baby  Dick  should 
accept  Jack  as  an  inevitable  part  of  his  world, 
but  Richarda  never  made  any  attempt  to  place 
the  association  of  the  two  children  in  one  home 
on  a  fraternal  basis.  At  first,  in  spite  of  the 
difference  in  their  ages,  they  played  together 
with  the  same  toys,  but  as  they  grew  older,  she 
imperceptibly  directed  their  energies  into  dis- 
tinct channels.  It  was  the  one  concession  she 
could  make  to  Homfrey,  and  one  that  she  was 
able  to  make  owing  to  the  great  difference  in 
the  temperaments  of  the  boys  —  each  seemed 
able  to  do  best  what  was  quite  impossible  to  the 
other.  While  Jack  sat  content  with  pencil  and 
79 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

paper,  unconsciously  wooing  the  dreams  which 
as  yet  he  had  no  power  to  express,  young  Dick 
risked  his  limbs  in  a  variety  of  athletic  experi- 
ments which  were  a  horror  to  behold.  But  each 
thought  the  other  a  marvel  —  there  never  were 
such  stories  as  Jack's,  and  there  never  was  a 
boy  who  could  do  with  hammer  and  nails  what 
Dick  could  do. 

As  Richarda  watched  other  mothers  with  their 
boys,  she  saw  how  little  was  accomplished  by 
the  woman  who  ranked  herself  towards  her  chil- 
dren as  private  detective,  and  who  never  will- 
ingly gave  them  the  right  of  choice.  As  Jack 
grew  older,  he  felt  little  temptation  to  deceive 
Lady  when  she  said  gravely :  "  Jack,  I  think 
you  want  to  do  something  that  is  all  wrong. 
But  perhaps  is  isn't,  and  I  want  you  to  go  on 
and  do  exactly  as  you  wish,  and  some  day  you 
can  tell  me  what  you  think  about  it." 

This  method  sometimes  required  not  only 
courage  and  patience,  but  also  a  fine  sense  of 
humour.  There  were  moments  of  crisis  in  deal- 
ing with  her  boys  when  Richarda,  unable  to  do 
anything  else,  just  laughed.  And  it  not  in- 
frequently seemed  as  if,  judging  by  results,  a 
laugh  was  quite  as  efficacious  as  a  prayer.  Why 
take  a  boy  seriously  when  you  could  take  him 
humorously  ? 

80 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

She  was  often  amused  by  the  strain  of  pater- 
nalism in  Jack's  guardianship  of  Dick. 
"  Lady,"  he  said  severely  one  day,  "  you  ought 
not  to  allow  Dick  to  go  swimming  with  the  Mc- 
Carthy boys." 

"Shouldn't  I?" 

"  No.  Of  course  you  shouldn't.  He'll 
knock  his  brains  out  diving,  or  do  something 
else.  You're  not  bringing  Dick  up  right.  You 
let  him  do  all  kinds  of  things  you  never  let  me 
do." 

"  But  I  don't  remember  that  you  ever  wanted 
to  go  swimming  with  the  McCarthy  boys." 
Richarda's  eyes  were  grave,  but  a  dimple  ap- 
peared suspiciously  at  the  side  of  her  chin. 

"  Oh,  then  if  I  had  wanted  to,  you  would  have 
let  me?  " 

"  Why,  of  course."  She  was  smiling  now. 
"  I've  always  thought  water  was  about  the  sa- 
fest kind  of  thing  you  could  put  a  boy  into,  if 
he's  any  kind  of  a  boy.  You  see,  Jack,  a  wo- 
man is  apt  to  be  afraid  to  let  her  boy  do  any- 
thing that  she  can't  do.  I've  tried  to  avoid 
that.  But  it  was  easier  with  you  than  with 
Dick,  because  he  will  always  be  wanting  to  do 
fearful  things  that  terrify  me.  But  so  far  as 
I  possibly  can,  I  must  let  him  do  them,  because 
81 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

I  am  sure  that  he  is  far  safer  doing  the  danger- 
ous thing  with  my  consent  and  sympathy  than 
without  it.  And  you  can  understand  that  with 
a  boy  of  Dick's  adventurous  spirit  it  might  come 
to  that." 

Jack  nodded ;  he  felt  himself  taken  into  Lady's 
confidence;  now  that  he  understood  the  philoso- 
phy of  her  action,  he  approved. 

"  Well  Lady,  it's  a  lucky  thing  for  Dick  and 
me  that  you  have  so  much  more  commonsense 
than  most  women,"  he  said  gravely.  The  dim- 
ple re-appeared  in  Richarda's  chin.  But  then 
Jack  was  always  a  delightful  person. 

Thus  the  years  slipped  by  until  the  time  came 
when  Jack  was  soon  to  enter  college,  and  just 
as  this  impending  change  in  the  home  life  was 
monopolising  Richarda's  thoughts,  an  old  friend 
of  her  school  days  stopped  for  a  brief  visit  on 
her  way  from  Paris  to  San  Francisco.  Cir- 
cumstances had  separated  them  and  their  inter- 
ests widely ;  each  was  curious  to  judge  the  meas- 
ure of  change  in  the  other. 

"  Yes,  I've  been  married  two  years,"  said  Hat- 
tie  Lewin  as  they  sat  comparing  notes  the  morn- 
ing after  her  arrival.  "  And  out  of  that  two 
years  how  many  months  do  you  suppose  I  have 
spent  under  Tommy  Lewin's  roof?  " 
82 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

Richarda  saw  that  she  was  not  expected  to  an- 
swer. 

"  Well,  my  dear,  I  won't  shock  you  by  telling 
you  too  abruptly.  But  I'm  going  to  spend  a 
month  with  him  now." 

"  A  month  ?  "  Richarda's  tone  was  incredu- 
lous. 

Mrs.  Lewin  laughed.  "  Yes.  For  one 
month  I  shall  be  an  angel  of  light  in  Tommy 
Lewin's  life  —  we  shall  kowtow  gracefully  at 
each  other,  then  I  shall  shake  his  honest  hand  of 
toil  and  kiss  him  impartially  on  both  sides  of 
his  moustache  —  Charda,  could  you  have  be- 
lieved it  in  me  to  marry  a  man  with  a  mous- 
tache ? —  and  I  shall  say  fervently :  '  Mizpah 
Tommy ! ' —  and  depart  me  in  peace  to  the  old 
place  at  Deerwood,  and  there  I  shall  abide  until 
I  go  next  time  to  Paris. 

"  This  is  my  ideal  of  married  life  and  I  have 
taught  Tommy  to  see  that  it  is  his.  Consider- 
ing the  mother-in-law  that  is  mine,  Tommy  made 
a  crude  mistake  in  ever  getting  married  at  all. 
I  hadn't  been  a  bride  in  their  house  a  week  be- 
fore I  quite  understood  that  I  was  an  interloper, 
and  that  I  disturbed  Mrs.  Lewin's  point  of  view. 
Naturally,  the  situation  being  new,  and  possibly 
disturbing  to  me  also,  I  was  at  a  loss  for  a  long 
83 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

time  just  how  to  deal  with  it.  But  my  sym- 
pathies from  the  start  were  all  with  Mrs.  Lewin, 
if  she  could  only  have  brought  herself  to  see  it. 
I  said  at  last :  '  Tommy,  really  now,  what  did 
you  get  married  for?' — and  of  course  he 
couldn't  give  me  any  good  and  sufficient  reason. 
He  weakly  murmured  things  about  my  having 
been  such  a  stunning  girl  and  all  that,  but  I 
pointed  out  to  him  that  with  his  age  and  expe- 
rience he  should  have  been  proof  against  my 
trivial  attractions." 

"  But  why  did  you  marry  him  ?  " 

"  My  dear! —  there  was  every  good  and  suffi- 
cient reason  why  I  should  marry  him.  There 
were  the  five  Chester  girls  with  just  one  invalid 
poor-as-a-church-mouse  father  at  their  backs. 
It  had  come  to  be  a  case  of  sink  or  swim,  and 
when  Tommy's  hull  appeared  on  the  horizon  I 
swam  to  meet  him  with  all  the  power  I  pos- 
sessed. And  see  the  result!  Each  time  I've 
gone  abroad  I've  taken  a  Chester  girl  with  me, 
and  brought  her  back  engaged.  There's  only 
Lilla  left,  and  I  tell  the  other  girls  they  can  do 
for  her.  They  call  me  The  General.  Oh,  I 
have  my  sphere  of  usefulness." 

"  I  see  you  have,  but  Hattie  — " 

"  Oh,  it  isn't  worth  being  serious  over,  my 
84 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

dear.  I  was  inclined  to  be  at  first.  Then  I 
saw  that  wouldn't  do  —  you  just  remember  that 
if  you  find  yourself  everlastingly  serious  about 
something,  it's  because  you've  let  your  point 
of  view  get  the  upper  hand  of  you,  and  you're 
able  to  see  only  one  side  of  the  matter.  You 
can't  be  serious  if  you  see  the  other  sides  —  it's 
always  too  funny.  Well,  I  cast  up  the  situation 
judicially.  I  said:  Here  is  Tommy  Lewin, 
and  there  is  his  mother,  who  has  lived  with  him 
ever  since  he  was  born.  Why  shouldn't  they 
understand  each  other  better,  being  of  the  same 
blood,  than  I  can  ever  hope  to  understand  either 
of  them?  Marriage  is  merely  a  make-shift  — 
you  needn't  shake  your  head  like  that,  Richarda, 
—  I  know  it's  a  harrowing  discovery  for  a  wo- 
man to  make,  but  it's  true,  so  why  dodge  it? 
Some  women  never  find  that  out,  I  know  — 
Well,  that's  so  much  to  the  good  for  them.  But 
I  had  to,  and  I  brought  order  out  of  chaos  by 
inventing  the  profession  of  visiting  wife.  I 
go  to  see  Tommy  every  six  months  and  stay 
with  him  one.  I  let  none  of  my  giddy  pleasures 
interfere  with  my  strict  adherence  to  this  duty. 
The  scheme  works  admirably.  I'm  treated  like 
a  gilt-edged  guest.  Tommy  receives  me  with 
open  arms  and  parts  from  me  in  tears.  My  sal- 
85 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

ary  for  two  months'  devotion  is  princely  —  no 
wife  of  the  ordinary  species  is  worth  so  much  to 
any  man.  And  Tommy  feels  very  proud  of  us 
as  an  unusual  pair." 

"  Hattie !  "  said  Richarda  simply. 

"  My  dear,  don't !  You  couldn't  prove  to  me 
that  I  haven't  been  a  very  wise  woman.  Tommy 
thinks  so  certainly.  Last  year  he  bought  back 
Father's  old  place  at  Deerwood  for  me  —  wasn't 
that  delicate  of  him  ?  " 

"  Very,"  said  Richarda,  absently.  "  But, 
Hattie  — " 

"  No  dear,  not  in  that  tone  of  voice.  Besides 
I  don't  want  to  talk  any  more  about  my  own 
affairs.  I  want  you  to  tell  me  about  this  boy. 
I'm  dying  to  know  all  about  him." 

For  Jack  was  coming  swiftly  across  the  grass, 
a  tall  boy  of  seventeen,  who  carried  himself  with 
an  air  apt  to  make  one  turn  as  he  passed.  It 
seemed  to  challenge  the  attention  to  which  he 
appeared  indifferent;  had  it  not  been  for  the 
grace  which  went  with  it,  a  first  impression 
might  not  have  been  of  unqualified  admiration. 

He  threw  himself  and  his  books  down  beside 
Richarda  with  a  gay  whoop  of  relief. 

"  Well,  how  to-day  ?  "     She  laid  her  hand  for 
a  moment  on  the  dark  head. 
86 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

"  Oh,  great,  Lady  —  simply  great !  Old 
Emory  said  I  was  born  knowing  Greek."  He 
threw  her  a  whimsical  look.  "  But  we  know 
better  than  that." 

To  Hattie  Lewin,  watching,  the  comradeship 
between  them  seemed  unique  —  she  must  know 
all  about  it.  But  Richarda  rose  hastily ;  she  saw 
her  husband  coming,  and  crossed  the  lawn  to 
meet  him.  And  Jack  slipped  away  —  he  had  a 
habit  of  being  elsewhere  when  Homfrey  was 
about. 

That  evening  Dawson  dropped  in.  "  My 
wife's  down  in  Missouri,"  he  explained.  "  Her 
mother's  broken  her  arm  and  she's  gone  to  see 
that  it  isn't  set  on  the  bias.  She  took  along 
with  her  all  the  children  that  it's  legal  to  travel 
with  on  one  fare,  and  I  feel  pretty  lonesome 
with  the  broken  half-dozen  that's  left.  I  say, 
Homfrey,  did  you  see  that  fellow  Chancy  when 
he  was  in  the  office  this  morning  ?  " 

"  I  never  do  see  him  since  I  got  through  that 
Campau  Commission.  You  couldn't  make  me 
look  his  way.  That  fellow  offered  the  cheapest 
set  of  brains  I  ever  was  asked  to  co-operate 
with." 

"  'Tisn't  all  cakes  and  ale  being  a  regent  for 
Waverley,"  explained  Dawson  to  Richarda. 
87 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

"  I'll  be  out  next  year  and  I  shan't  be  sorry. 
This  cuss  Chancy  sneaked  in  this  morning  with 
a  fresh  little  scheme  for  poisoning1  my  mind 
against  the  man  who  is  head  of  the  philosophical 
department  out  there  —  fellow  called  Maxwell 
—  Scotchman  —  I  voted  for  him  for  the  place 
because  I  thought  from  what  I  heard  about  him 
that  he  was  pretty  sure  to  stir  things  up  in  that 
dead-and-alive  department.  And  he  everlast- 
ingly has.  He's  got  all  the  little  men  down 
on  him,  which  is  always  a  valuable  sign  —  they 
say  he  is  as  destructive  in  his  teaching  as  a 
Gatling  gun,  so  all  is  well.  But  Chaney  — 
Chaney's  head  of  the  English  department,  and 
he  has  a  little  scheme  destined  ultimately  to 
oust  Maxwell,  and  elevate  to  his  place  some  pious 
ignoramus  who  probably  knows  as  much  about 
philosophy  as  an  oyster  does  of  photography. 
I  lit  into  Chaney  for  all  I  was  worth.  When  I 
got  through,  he  gasped :  '  Why,  Mr.  Dawson, 
you  talk  to  me  as  if  I  was  the  worst  man  — ' 
You  know  his  squeal,  Homfrey.  '  Lord  No ! ' 
I  said.  '  I  never  look  at  you  without  wonder- 
ing how  you  come  to  be  as  decent  as  you  are.' 
"  He  said,  '  Good-morning,'  and  went  out 
with  the  hymn-book-in-one-hand-and-Bible-in- 
the-other  air  that  always  makes  me  want  to  kick 
him." 

88 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

"  Still,  viewed  without  prejudice,  Chancy  is 
an  absolutely  consistent  specimen  of  a  mean 
man,"  said  Homfrey.  "  He  is  a  work  of  art 
—  a  perfect  example  of  his  species  —  and  there- 
for admirable,  had  we  sufficient  broadminded- 
ness  to  perceive  it." 

"  I  wonder  if  I'm  that  kind  of  woman,"  said 
Mrs.  Lewin  suddenly ;  she  felt  that  she  had 
been  out  of  the  conversation  long  enough;  this 
seemed  an  opening.  "  I  know  Richarda  thinks 
so." 

Richarda  blushed. 

"  Oh  yes,  you  do,  Richarda !  If  you  could  see 
the  way  you  look  — " 

"  Hattie !  " 

But  something  forced  Mrs.  Lewin  on  —  she 
felt  as  if  the  two  men  were  a  protection  to  her 
against  that  silent  idealism  of  Richarda's  which 
tormented  her  almost  beyond  endurance.  She 
turned  to  Dawson :  "  It's  like  this  —  Richarda 
says  nothing,  but  I  know  she  thinks  I'm  awful 
because  I  only  spend  two  months  in  the  year  with 
my  husband.  Now,  I  put  it  to  you:  I  had 
been  married  three  weeks  when  I  discovered  that 
Tommy  Lewin  cared  more  for  his  mother  and 
for  pie  than  he  ever  would  for  me.  I  saw  that 
I  could  never  hope  to  rank  in  his  affections,  on 
89 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

a  par  with  those  two  items.  So  I  arranged 
things  this  way."  She  tossed  the  story  of  her 
marriage  lightly  at  the  two  men,  with  a  note 
of  defiance  in  her  voice. 

Dawson  laughed.  "  It's  happened  before,  I 
think.  I  mean  the  mother  and  the  pie  question. 
Man's  a  strange  animal.  He  falls  in  love  so 
inconsequently,  and  with  such  prodigality  of 
emotion,  and  even  turns  his  mother  and  the  pie 
down  during  the  attack.  Seems  to  me  though, 
that  you  dealt  with  the  situation  rather  ab- 
ruptly. I  should  have  supposed  you  might 
have  used  up  a  couple  of  years  — " 

"Years?" 

"  I  said  years.  But  I  wouldn't  exclude  tears. 
There's  a  great  deal  said  in  abuse  of  feminine 
tears  that  I'm  not  in  sympathy  with.  As  a  do- 
mestic lubricant  they're  unsurpassed." 

Mrs.  Lewin  looked  at  Dawson  in  open  scorn. 
"  Well,  for  a  sensible  man  — " 

"  My  dear  lady,  I'm  not  sensible.  No  man 
is  when  it  comes  to  certain  things.  Now  I  ad- 
mit that  I  admire  the  elegance  of  emotion  with 
which  you  settle  what  might  seem  to  the  weak- 
minded  to  be  rather  a  serious  problem,  but  — " 

"  But  don't  you  consider  that  I  showed  ad- 
mirable judgment  in  — " 
90 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

"  Admirable  composure,  I  think  I  should 
say,"  remarked  Dawson.  "  But  the  trouble  is, 
a  husband  is  not  a  business  proposition  —  he 
can  never  be  handled  quite  satisfactorily  on  that 
basis.  But  if  you're  satisfied,  I  wouldn't  worry 
about  the  party  of  the  second  part." 

"I  don't,"  said  Mrs.  Lewin.  "But  Ri- 
charda  — " 

Homfrey  jumped  up.  "  Let's  get  the 
cards,"  he  said.  "  These  metaphysical  discus- 
sions are  beyond  me." 

As  he  passed  his  wife's  chair,  he  laid  his  hand 
on  her  shoulder  —  she  looked  up  and  their  eyes 
met  in  a  glance  that  Hattie  Lewin  intercepted. 
What  fools  men  were !  Richarda  was  a  sweet 
little  thing  of  course;  a  man's  woman,  always 
ready  at  any  sacrifice  to  herself,  to  say  and  do 
the  thing  that  made  her  husband  feel  well 
pleased  with  himself ;  some  women  seemed  created 
just  for  that.  She  sorted  her  cards  and  thanked 
God  that  she  was  not  as  such. 

"  It's  a  queer  thing,"  broke  out  Dawson  after 
they  had  played  a  long  time  in  silence,  "  but  a 
man's  faith  in  woman  has  got  to  be  on  deposit 
somewhere.  You  find  it  sometimes  in  pretty 
queer  places,  but  it's  well  to  remember  that  the 
poor  devil  probably  put  it  where  it  seemed  to 
91 


him  he  got  the  highest  rate  of  interest.  I'm 
thinking  of  your  husband  — "  he  looked  at  Mrs. 
Lewin  — "  I  daresay  he  dreamed  some  pretty 
dreams  about  two  years  ago.  Oh,  we  all  do. 
I  tell  you  when  my  daughter  is  going  to  get 
married  I  mean  to  say  to  her:  '  See  here,  I 
want  you  to  understand  that  marriage  is  about 
the  darndest  institution  ever  devised.  You're 
going  to  have  a  hell  of  a  time,  my  dear,  but  if 
you'll  buckle  down  to  it  as  seriously  as  if  you 
were  taking  the  veil  and  giving  up  all  the  pomps 
and  vanities  of  this  wicked  world,  perhaps  you'll 
pull  through  to  a  peaceful  old  age.'  That  will 
prepare  her  for  the  shock  of  finding-out  that 
her  husband  is  just  plain  man." 

"  Tell  us,  Richarda  — "  said  Mrs.  Lewin  teas- 
ingly  —  she  looked  at  Homfrey  — "  I've  told  her 
everything  about  my  husband,  and  she  hasn't 
said  a  thing  to  me  about  you  —  Richarda,  did 
you  have  a  shock  like  that?  Did  you  find  out 
that  your  hero  was  just  plain  man?  " 

Richarda  was  looking  at  her  cards;  she  did 
not  lift  her  eyes  from  them.  "  It  dosn't  inter- 
est me  to  talk  about  that,  Hattie,"  she  said  in- 
differently. 

"  Listen  to  her ! "  exclaimed  Mrs.  Lewin. 
"It  must  have  been  very  bad  if  she  can't  tell 
92 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

us  about  it."  She  flashed  a  daring  glance  at 
Homf  rey ;  she  was  in  her  most  reckless  mood, 
and  it  occurred  to  her  that  this  was  the  type  of 
man  to  have  had  many  experiences  before  he 
settled  down  as  the  husband  of  his  wife. 
"  Dear —  "  she  leaned  forward,  her  eyes  fixed 
upon  Richarda's  face  — "  Was  it  very  bad  ? — 
did  you  find  out  that  he  — " 

Richarda  laid  her  cards  on  the  table.  "  What 
makes  you  say  such  things?  "  she  demanded. 
"  You  do  not  suppose  — " 

"  There  are  a  great  many  things  I  don't  sup- 
pose. I  don't  suppose  for  instance  that  you 
would  dream  of  asking  for  vourself  the  same 
liberty  that  you  would  accord  to  your  husband 
—  that  you  would  consider  his  right.  And  I 
should  like  to  know  why  not." 

"  I  don't  know  why,  Hattie."  Richarda 
turned  to  the  two  men.  "  Can't  we  go  on  with 
the  game?"  she  asked  helplessly;  they  saw 
that  there  were  tears  in  her  eyes.  But  in  the 
next  instant  she  turned  on  Mrs.  Lewin  in  a 
blaze.  "  I  don't  know  what  you  mean  when 
you  talk  as  you  do.  My  husband's  liberty  is 
his  own  affair,  and  as  for  myself  —  I  have 
never  desired  more  than  I  have  had." 

Mrs.  Lewin  laughed  provokingly,  but  the 
93 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

game  went  on  unmarked  by  further  incident; 
there  had  been  a  finality  in  Richarda's  manner 
that  precluded  continued  argument. 

But  long  after  the  house  was  still,  Richarda 
lay  awake.  How  often  it  had  seemed  to  her 
that  she  could  not  bear  it,  that  Homfrey  should 
look  at  her  and  wonder  what  she  would  think  if 
she  knew. 

To-night  she  had  tried  to  tell  him  that  with 
her,  he  was  safe  —  that  she  accepted  his  judg- 
ment that  there  were  things  it  was  not  for  her 
to  know. 

She  had  quivered  under  his  touch  and  under 
that  look  in  his  eyes  —  such  revelation  of  ten- 
derness towards  her  had  become  so  rare. 

But  Richarda  could  not  understand,  because 
the  processes  of  Homfrey's  thinking  were  neces- 
sarily obscure  to  her,  how  difficult  it  had  become 
for  him  to  express  any  emotion  that  concerned 
itself  with  her,  whether  of  pleasure  or  of  dis- 
pleasure. There  were  moments  when  he  felt  her 
hunger  for  his  tenderness  —  moments  when  he 
was  tempted  to  take  her  in  his  arms  in  the  old 
vehement  way  of  their  early  married  days.  Yet 
he  remained  silent. 

For  between  them,  that  boy  stood;  he  was 
never  unconscious  of  him.  Richarda's  deter- 
94 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

mined  devotion  to  him  remained  the  inexplica- 
ble note  of  discord  in  the  harmony  of  their 
lives ;  a  discord  which  nowhere  revealed  a  rela- 
tion to  the  motif  of  her  life,  which  clear  to  Hom- 
frey's  understanding  was  her  affection  for 
himself.  She  had  developed  into  a  woman  of 
great,  but  unconscious  fascination  for  any  man, 
through  her  paramount  passion  for  one.  For 
his  sake  she  seemed  to  have  garnered  within  her- 
self all  the  qualities  that  men  have  agreed  upon 
as  adorable  in  woman ;  Homf  rey  knew  that  there 
was  no  sacrifice  she  would  not  make  for  him  — 
no  pain  she  would  flinch  at  suffering. 

No  sacrifice  —  save  one ! 

And  because  of  it,  there  lurked  always,  far 
back  in  his  mind,  only  admitted  to  recognition 
in  rare  moments,  the  feeling  that  his  wife's  per- 
fection of  sweetness  was  an  offering  to  him  —  a 
species  of  reparation  for  the  wrong  that  she 
did  him.  It  was  a  wrong  that  few  men  would 
have  borne;  it  was  only  because  of  his  long 
settled  attitude  towards  life  that  he  was  able  to 
bear  it.  The  older  he  grew  the  more  clearly 
he  saw  that  the  whole  round  for  him  and  the 
next  man  was  merely  a  scene  from  some  uncom- 
prehended  play  which,  for  them,  had  neither 
end  nor  beginning.  And  Richarda  had  her  part 
95 


as  he  had  his  — it  was  not  for  him  to  interfere. 
He  saw  people  daily  stretch  out  their  hands  and 
sacrilegiously  touch  the  ark  of  another  life,  as 
confident  of  their  ability  and  wisdom  to  direct 
the  issues  of  destiny  as  though  they  were  the 
All-Wise,  Omniscient,  Omnipotent. 

It  was  always  the  same  argument :  "  But  I 
know  I'm  right."  He  heard  it  every  day  in  his 
office,  and  he  never  heard  it  without  wondering 
with  a  great  wonder.  Whence  came  this  mar- 
vellous audacity  which  never  questioned  its  own 
judgment  —  which  never  perceived  that  it  was 
possible  for  this  finite  /  to  be  mistaken?  For 
as  he  watched,  there  seemed  so  little  to  warrant 
even  the  wisest  in  reliance  upon  the  impecca- 
bility of  his  own  opinions.  Human  nature  — 
the  best  —  lied  to  itself  unconsciously ;  the  per- 
sonal bias  was  never  eliminated. 

He  watched  and  saw  all  this,  and  then  turned 
his  search-light  upon  himself,  and  found  within 
just  what  he  saw  without.  His  reward  was 
that,  unconsciously,  he  rose  to  great  heights  in 
dealing  with  the  nature  of  his  wife.  Never 
again,  after  the  birth  of  his  son,  had  he  uttered 
protest  against  the  presence  in  his  home  of  this 
alien  boy,  yet  he  had  borne  in  silence  some  ex- 
periences that  had  left  deep  marks  upon  him. 
96 


There  was  one  that  scorched  still  in  his  memory ; 
it  happened  to  him  soon  after  Jack  had  first 
been  sent  to  school.  He  came  into  the  library 
and  saw  a  card  lying  on  the  table  —  he  glanced 
at  it  idly  and  observed  that  it  was  the  report 
card  of  John  Homfrey. 

In  a  moment  the  very  air  about  him  seemed 
to  be  in  flames ;  he  went  to  the  door  and  called  : 
"  Richarda !  "  in  a  voice  that  had  to  fight  its  way 
to  utterance. 

She   came  running,  frightened. 

But  when  he  saw  her,  a  change  came.  "  No, 
I  don't  want  you,"  he  said  heavily,  and  putting 
her  from  him,  he  shut  the  door. 

Then  the  storm  raged.  Homfrey  —  that 
boy  to  be  called  by  his  name,  his  son's  name  — 
that  boy,  the  son  of  what  blood  the  Lord  alone 
knew! 

He  walked  miles  in  that  quiet  library  that 
afternoon. 

But  after  a  long  time  he  was  still.  A  man's 
name  —  what  was  it  ? —  a  tag  on  his  door-plate 
to-day  —  on  his  tomb-stone  to-morrow. 

Sometimes,  by  way  of  setting  himself  a  prob- 
lem, he  wondered  what  would  happen  if  he  "  as- 
serted his  authority  " —  he  smiled  at  the  inter- 
pretation of  marriage  revealed  in  the  expres- 
97 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

sion  —  and  demanded  that  the  boy  be  removed 
from  the  house.  It  was  proof  of  that  complex- 
ity which  he  knew  lay  under  Richarda's  appar- 
ent simplicity  of  conduct  in  the  wedding  relation, 
that  he  found  himself  unable  to  arrive  at  any 
answer  to  this  question  which  remained  the  an- 
swer the  next  time  he  propounded  it. 

There  was  one  thing  certain,  and  that  was, 
that  if  Richarda  had  selected  her  protege  merely 
by  way  of  demonstrating  the  perceptive  value 
of  her  judgment,  she  would  have  had  ample 
reason  to  be  proud  of  herself.  For  as  the  years 
passed  Homfrey  could  not  fail  to  perceive  that 
here  was  a  mind  making  itself  ready  for  no  ordi- 
nary maturing,  though  his  pose  was  that  of  con- 
tempt for  the  pyrotechnic  qualities  of  the  boy's 
brilliance. 

Yet  Jack  was  no  miasmatic  specimen  of  ab- 
normal precocity.  Homfrey  watched  him  some- 
times, and  thought  grimly  that  whoever  was 
responsible  for  him,  had  given  to  the  world  a 
creature  who  revelled  as  few  could  in  the  pure 
joy  of  living. 

The  boy's  temperament  was  so  strangely,  so 

tormentingly  similar  to  his  own,  which  was  but 

further    example    of   the   persistent     irony     of 

things,  for  it  was  clear  that  Dick  was  of  a  dif- 

98 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

ferent  make  from  himself  —  a  solid,  serious  per- 
son, with  none  of  that  remarkable  fatality  of 
intuition  which  had  largely  made  Homfrey'  rep- 
utation ;  he  had  instead  the  quality  of  plod  which 
would  doubtless  carry  him  far,  but  he  would 
never  know  those  fascinating  risks  in  which  the 
gambling  soul  of  his  father  exulted. 

The  attitude  of  Richarda  towards  her  own  son 
was  an  interesting  study  to  Homfrey.  Some- 
times when  the  affairs  of  the  two  boys  threatened 
collision,  it  seemed  as  if  she  deliberately  pro- 
tected Jack  at  the  expense  of  Dick.  But  Hom- 
frey could  understand  that;  it  was  what  was  to 
be  expected  from  a  character  like  hers.  She 
argued  doubtless,  that  her  child  was  safe  in  his 
father's  and  her  own  affection ;  the  other,  save 
for  her,  was  at  the  mercy  of  chance.  She 
showed  the  utmost  skill  in  keeping  Jack  in  the 
background,  but  Homfrey  knew  that  she  was 
eternally  conscious  that  he  was  there. 

She  was ;  her  face  had  the  pathetic  patience 
of  one  who  has  waited  long,  and  is  still  waiting 
—  the  expression  added  a  wistful  charm  to  her 
manner. 

She  was  waiting  still  —  for  the  crisis  which 
never  came,  which  must  never  come.  She  was 
not  clear  yet  as  to  her  attitude  towards  the  great 
99 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

problem  in  her  life  —  her  point  of  view  re- 
mained too  hopelessly  confused  for  satisfactory 
analysis.  But  she  had  learnt  to  know  that  it 
was  after  her  periods  of  greatest  depression, 
that  there  were  granted  to  her  those  rare  mo- 
ments of  exaltation  when  she  was  able  to  believe 
that  she  was,  somehow,  at  some  time,  to  see  of 
the  travail  of  her  soul  and  be  satisfied. 


100 


CHAPTER  VII 

"  You're  sure  you've  got  everything,  Jack  ?  " 

"  Oh,  Lady  dear,  everything !  Besides,  think 
of  it,  only  forty  miles  away.  To  hear  you,  one 
would  suppose  I  was  off  for  China  at  least." 

"Yes,  isn't  it  foolish?  But  Jack  —  it's  be- 
cause it's  the  beginning.  You  will  never  really 
come  back  to  me  again." 

The  boy  threw  himself  down  on  the  floor  be- 
side her,  and  leaned  his  brown  head  against  her 
knee.  Winsome  ways  of  appeal  he  had,  and 
Richarda  knew  and  loved  them  all.  Her  fingers 
strayed  over  his  hair  —  with  her  eyes  shut  she 
could  have  believed  it  Homfrey's.  But  Jack 
was  cast  in  a  darker  mould  than  his  father  —  in 
him  the  blue  eyes  were  brown.  But  the  expres- 
sion !  Time  and  again  her  heart  had  stood  still 
in  fear;  it  sometimes  seemed  incredible  that  any- 
one could  fail  to  see  and  understand. 

"  That  boy  is  the  most  adaptable  dog,"  Daw- 
son  said  to  her  one  day.  "  Just  look  at  him  — 
he  has  Homfrey's  tricks  and  turns  to  the  life. 
It's  the  gift  of  the  artistic  spirit  of  course  — 
101 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

it  soaks  up  its  environment  like  a  sponge.  I 
daresay  after  he's  been  at  Waverley  a  while, 
he'll  be  a  counterpart  of  Maxwell." 

"  I  shouldn't  wonder,"  said  Richarda  faintly. 

She  recalled  that  now,  as  she  felt  her  fingers 
on  Jack's  hair,  for  only  to-day  as  she  had 
watched  him  playing  tennis  with  Homfrey,  she 
had  had  again  one  of  those  moments  of  unen- 
durable fear.  The  father  had  stamped  himself 
ineffaceably  upon  his  son ; —  white-shirted,  bare- 
armed,  bareheaded ;  playing  with  the  same  inten- 
sity of  action ;  the  one  voice  an  echo  of  the  other 
• —  she  had  waited,  listening  for  what  surely 
must  come  —  that  moment  when  Homfrey  him- 
self would  be  forced  to  understand. 

Her  fingers  trembled  now;  Jack  seized  them 
and  lightly  kissed  their  tips. 

"  Oh  Lady,"  he  exclaimed,  bubbling  over, 
"  It's  so  good  to  be  a  boy  going  to  college ! 
Do  you  know  it?  " 

She  smiled.  "  Yes,  I  can  imagine  that.  It's 
good  to  be  young." 

"  But  better  to  be  older,  Lady,"  he  answered 
quickly ;  the  colour  came  into  his  face. 

"Why?" 

"  To  be  master  of  one's  self  —  to  be  under  no 
obligations  to  anyone." 

102 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

"  Yes,  of  course.  Every  boy  should  wish  for 
that."  She  spoke  calmly,  but  the  colour  had 
come  into  her  face  too. 

Jack  dropped  her  hand;  she  understood  what 
he  was  thinking,  but  there  was  nothing  that  she 
could  say  —  Homfrey  was  never  mentioned  be- 
tween them.  But  after  a  while  she  spoke  hur- 
riedly :  "  Jack,  to-night  I  must  tell  you  I  want 
you  never  to  forget  —  when  you  are  away  from 
me  —  that  you  have  made  me  very  happy  — 
that  you  have  never  disappointed  me." 

"  Oh  Lady !  "  he  exclaimed  softly. 

There  was  another  long  silence ;  then  Jack 
said :  "  You'll  come  to  see  me  very  often,  won't 
you?" 

"  I  don't  know." 

He  looked  up  at  her. 

"  But  that  won't  make  any  difference,"  she 
said  lightly.  "  I  shall  always  be  thinking  of 
you." 

"  Thinking  of  me !  That  won't  go  very  far, 
Lady." 

"  Oh  yes,  it  will !  It  goes  further  than  any- 
thing else,  Jack."  She  was  speaking  in  an  im- 
petuous rush  now.  "  I  shall  be  thinking  of  you 
all  the  time  —  you  are  never  to  forget  that." 
Her  heart  was  oppressed  with  the  thought  of 
103 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

things  which  she  felt  she  ought  to  say  to  him  — 
things  not  easy  to  say.  "  Jack  —  sometimes  I 
get  so  afraid  for  you.  You're  so  clever,  and 
clever  men  —  sometimes  —  I  think  —  it's  hard 
for  them  to  be  good." 

Dear  Lady !  Jack  could  have  smiled  —  or 
wept  —  at  her  nai've  ingenuity.  To-night  he 
understood  that  he  faced  the  parting  of  the 
ways ;  it  was  not  unlikely  that  the  path  he  would 
choose  would  lead  him  far,  into  strange  places 
—  places  of  which  Lady  had  no  knowledge. 
And  she  would  bid  him  beware! — he  felt  that 
he  had  never  loved  her  as  he  did  at  this  mo- 
ment. 

She  went  on,  her  voice  quivering  with  shy- 
ness. "  You  see,  you're  so  good  to  look  at, 
Jack.  I've  always  been  so  glad  of  that,  but 
to-night,  I  think  I  wish  you  weren't." 

Jack  broke  into  laughter. 

"  Yes,  I  know  —  it  seems  funny  for  me  to  say 
that."  She  looked  at  him  patiently.  "But 
some  day  you  will  understand.  You  have  all 
the  endowment  that  sometimes  makes  things  very 
hard  for  a  man." 

She  was  skirting  a  big  question  and  she 
mourned  her  lack  of  courage.  Now,  if  ever, 
the  boy  needed  a  father  to  forewarn  his  feet  of 
104 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

pitfalls,  but  he  was  to  go  out  upon  his  long 
way  in  the  world  with  only  her  halting  admoni- 
tions as  his  guide.  She  had  sought  in  all  these 
years  to  take  possession  of  his  imagination  with 
her  ideals  —  to  strengthen  him  against  the  com- 
ing of  that  time  when  his  nature  might  feel  the 
strain  in  every  nerve  of  all  that  was  a  sin  against 
him  in  his  inheritance. 

To-night  she  realised  that  her  work  was  done ; 
henceforth  other  influences  were  to  mould  him, 
other  powers  to  control.  Would  her  simple 
teachings  avail  him,  in  that  vortex  of  compli- 
cated motive,  where  evil  tempts  with  smile  of 
innocence,  and  honour  is  but  the  mask  of  expe- 
diency ? 

"  Have  I?  "  laughed  Jack.  "  I'm  glad  of  it, 
Lady.  I  don't  want  things  easy.  Oh,  don't 
sigh  like  that !  I  know  what  a  worry  I  am, 
what  a  bad  boy  I've  often  been,  but  wait  — 
some  day  — "  he  let  the  uncompleted  sentence 
stand. 

"  I  know,"  said  Richarda.  "  I'm  sure  of  that. 
I  always  have  been." 

"  Lady,  you're  adorable !  "  he  exclaimed  im- 
pulsively, and  then  laughed  with  her.  "  Now 
I  must  go  up-stairs  and  say  good-night  to  Dick. 
He'll  be  looking  for  me.  But  I  won't  be  long." 
105 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

Presently  she  heard  peals  of  laughter  from 
the  room  above;  her  face  grew  sad  as  she  lis- 
tened. In  spite  of  the  most  difficult  conditions, 
she  had  maintained  between  these  two,  the  chil- 
dren of  the  same  father,  an  affection  such  as 
neither  might  have  felt  for  his  own  brother. 
She  had  held  them  together,  but  in  the  future  a 
strong  hand  would  hold  them  apart.  She  knew 
that  it  was  not  Homfrey's  intention  to  send 
Dick  to  Jack's  college;  she  understood  that 
Homf rey  of  Harvard  and  Homfrey  of  Waverley 
were  intended  in  the  future,  to  have  as  little 
community  of  association  as  possible.  The  cru- 
elty of  that  to  Jack ! —  sometimes  it  was  hard 
for  her  to  remember  that  Homfrey  did  not  know 
what  she  knew. 

Occasionally  —  not  very  often  now  —  she 
thought  of  the  boy's  mother,  who  in  all  these 
years  had  made  no  sign.  There  seemed  such 
irony  in  the  fate  of  being  the  mother  of  a  boy 
who  had  become  what  Jack  had,  and  in  never 
knov,  ing  it.  But  she  was  doubtless  content,  and 
probably  the  mother  of  other  children  who  pos- 
sessed for  her  the  attraction  of  being  reputably 
born.  Richarda's  lip  curled  when  she  thought 
of  this ;  the  advantages  seemed  all  on  Jack's 
side  in  comparison. 

106 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

Jack  came  down-stairs,  but  did  not  come  back 
to  her;  she  waited,  and  presently  she  heard 
the  sound  of  the  piano ;  he  was  playing  to  him- 
self in  the  dark  —  it  was  a  way  of  his  when 
Homfrey  was  absent,  as  to-night. 

She  went  in  and  slipped  into  her  usual  place 
on  a  low  chair  beside  him,  and  looked  at  him 
as  if  she  were  seeing  him  for  the  last  time ;  the 
light  from  a  street-lamp  illuminated  his  head 
delicately,  and  accentuated  a  certain  austerity 
of  expression  she  had  never  observed  in  him  be- 
fore. 

"  Jack,  you  look  like  the  picture  of  a  young 
saint,"  she  said. 

"Do  I?"  he  answered  absently. 

Presently  he  was  playing  faster  —  the  keys 
were  in  whirlwind ;  some  strange  mood  was  upon 
him  working  itself  out  through  the  crowded 
notes. 

She  had  never  seen  him  like  this  before;  as 
she  listened  she  grew  perturbed.  There  were 
possibilities  of  tragic  emotion  in  a  nature  which 
revealed  so  soon  an  almost  sinister  appreciation 
of  the  exquisiteness  of  agony  in  that  cruel  chro- 
matic strain,  repeated  again  and  again  with 
such  varying  subtlety  of  expression  that  she  felt 
she  could  not  bear  the  sound  of  it  once  more  — 
107 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

and   then   there   was   silence  —  the   silence   that 
brings  a  sense  of  fear  with  it. 

"  Lady  !  " —  the  word  came  so  quietly  that  she 
might  have  been  tempted  to  believe  the  tempest 
stilled ;  instinctively,  she  knew  better.  "  Lady, 
tell  me  —  I  want  to  know  —  to-night  I  must 
know.  Who  were  my  parents  ?  " 

She  was  looking  at  a  slender  silver  vase,  filled 
with  white  and  purple  sweet  peas  —  Homf rey 
had  brought  them  to  her  when  he  came  in  hur- 
riedly at  noon  to  prepare  for  an  unexpected 
trip.  How  many  were  there? — one,  two,  three 
—  No,  she  was  not  thinking  of  that.  Yet  she 
began  again  —  one,  two,  three  — 

Who  "were  my  parents? 

But  she  had  always  expected  that  question ; 
for  years  she  had  faced  its  certain  coming.  And 
she  had  manipulated  words  in  every  species  of 
reply,  so  that  when  she  was  at  last  confronted 
with  it,  it  should  not  find  her  unprepared. 

"  Lady ! " 

"  Yes  Jack.  Wait  a  moment."  She  got  up 
to  re-arrange  the  white  and  purple  flowers. 
"  Oh,  how  stupid  I  am !  I've  only  made  them 
look  worse."  She  sat  down  again.  It  was 
childish  to  be  so  nervous  —  there  was  nothing 
impossible  to  explain. 

108 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

"  There's  really  nothing  to  tell,  Jack.  I 
know  so  little,  you  see.  I  can  easily  tell  you 
what  —  what  — ; 

"  You  can  tell  me  who  I  am.  That  is  all  I 
want  to  know." 

"  Yes,  of  course.     But  Jack  — " 

"Well?" 

"  You  know  you  can  trust  me.  I've  never 
failed  you,  have  I?  " 

"  No,  you've  never  failed  me.  But  this  — 
what  is  it  ? —  why  don't  you  tell  me  at  once  what 
I  want  to  know?  " 

"  I  don't  know,"  she  faltered. 

"  But  you  know." 

She  was  silent. 

"  Lady,  isn't  it  my  right  to  know." 

"  It  may  be  your  right,   but   sometimes  — " 

He  made  an  impatient  gesture.  "  It's  so 
simple.  I  can't  understand  why  there  should 
be  any  difficulty  about  it.  I  want  to  know  where 
I  stand.  I  want  to  know  just  where  I  belong." 

"  Oh  Jack,  have  I  done  so  little  — "  her  voice 
broke. 

"  You  !  "  he  cried. 

There  was  such  passion  of  tribute  in  his  tone 
that  her  heart  took  courage.     But  before  she 
could  speak  again  he  said  abruptly: 
109 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

"  Does  Mr.  Homfrey  know  who  I  am?  " 

Almost  before  she  realised  that  her  lips  had 
opened,  she  answered  breathlessly :  "  No." 

It  was  such  a  relief  to  be  able  to  say  that  — 
it  seemed  at  the  moment  to  dispose  of  the  most 
perilous  side  of  the  question. 

"But  you  do?" 

She  was  silent;  then  a  sudden  terror  seized 
her.  She  had  been  forgetting  how  simple  it  all 
was,  and  that  had  betrayed  her  into  this  slip. 
"  Don't  you  see,  Jack,  that  I  just  took  you  be- 
cause I  wanted  you  —  I  had  never  seen  you  or 
heard  of  you  until  a  week  before  you  came  to 
be  my  boy  always." 

He  looked  at  her  steadily.  "  You  wish  me  to 
understand  that  you  adopted  an  unknown  child 
because  you  wanted  him  —  when  your  husband 
objected  —  when  he  always  has  objected  to  hav- 
ing me  under  your  roof?  " 

Again  she  was  silent. 

"  Can  you  not  understand  what  it  means  to 
me  to  realise  that  I  have,  I  suppose,  no  right  to 
any  name  —  that  to-morrow  I  go  out  into  the 
world  able  to  give  to  it  no  reputable  account 
of  myself — v'  his  voice  hardened  in  determina- 
tion — "  that  I  shall  be  ashamed  when  men  ask 
who  I  am?" 

110 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

"  Why,  you're  Jack  Homfrey,"  she  said  with 
an  effort  at  lightness ;  then  she  grew  white. 

He  smiled  bitterly.  "  That  won't  do,  Lady. 
And  you  forget  your  husband.  You  forget 
that  all  these  years  he  has  merely  endured  me 
in  his  home.  Do  you  think  there  has  been  a 
day  when  I  have  forgotten  that,  since  I  was 
old  enough  to  understand?  And  do  you  think 
that  in  the  world  he  will  vouch  for  me  ? —  that 
if  anyone  asked  him  who  I  was,  he  would  stand 
by  me  and  say  that  I  was  Jack  Homfrey? — 
you  know  he  would  not.  Homfrey ! —  I  hate 
the  name !  " 

"  Jack !  " 

But  the  storm  had  burst  —  she  saw;  that. 
"Do  you  know  what  I  played  out  just  now? 
No,  I  won't  tell  you."  He  clenched  his  hand. 
"  He  is  your  husband,  Lady,  but  some  day  — " 

"  How  dare  you  ?  "  Richarda  was  in  a  flame. 
"  How  dare  you  forget  that  all  these  years  your 
home  — "  but  she  said  no  more ;  she  held  out 
her  hand  to  the  boy  and  looked  at  him  through 
her  tears. 

"  I    know,"    he    said    miserably.      "  I    ought 

never  to  forget,  but  Lady,  you  are  not  fair  to 

me.      I   want  you  to  tell  me  what   I   want  to 

know."     He  waited;  he  would  not  speak  again, 

111 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

and  she  was  silent  a  long  time.  At  last  she 
looked  up  —  her  voice  was  strangely  sweet  as 
she  said :  "  I  cannot  tell  you  anything  more, 
Jack." 

He  looked  at  her  steadily.  "  I  see  that  you 
will  not.  I  shall  not  ask  you  to  again." 

"  Oh  Jack  !  "     It  was  a  sad  cry. 

But  he  did  not  heed  it ;  they  sat  in  silence 
while  she  timidly  watched  his  stern  face  — 
twenty,  thirty  years  from  now,  scarred  by  the 
experiences  of  life  —  were  these  to  be  the  lines 
indelibly  graven  upon  it? 

No !  —  she  demanded  happiness  for  him ;  it 
was  the  due  of  this  misused  child  of  chance. 

But  when  he  spoke  it  was  only  to  torment  her 
into  fresh  fears.  "  How  I  have  tried  to  remem- 
ber, and  I  can  only  be  sure  of  one  thing,  and 
that  is  the  first  time  that  I  came  here.  A  woman 
brought  me  —  I  can  feel  yet  the  sort  of  hand 
she  had  —  it  wasn't  like  yours,  Lady,  but  I 
don't  know  why.  And  that's  all  I  can  remem- 
ber. But  it  doesn't  matter." 

She  looked  at  him  with  wan  eyes  —  she  had 
thought  all  that  buried  in  the  safe  forgetfulness 
of  a  baby's  mind ! 

He  began  to  play  again,  but  this  time  with  a 
touch  as  light  as  the  breath  from  a  sleeping 
child's  lips. 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

He  looked  at  her.  "  I'm  talking  to  you.  Do 
you  understand?  " 

She  nodded,  and  was  comforted.  But  only 
for  the  moment.  For  to-night  he  had  begged  of 
her  the  knowledge  that  she  had  concerning  him, 
and  she  had  refused  it.  Some  day  when  he  was 
away  from  her,  he  would  remember  that  against 
her  with  bitterness. 

"  Jack !  " —  she  was  driven  to  sudden  speech 
— "  Some  day  you  may  find  it  hard  to  forgive 
me  because  I  would  not  tell  you  what  you  want 
to  know.  But  when  you  think  that — "  she 
laid  her  hand  on  his  arm  insistently  — "  You 
are  to  remember  that  I  did  not  tell  you  because 
I  could  not.  If  it  ever  happened  that  you  came 
to  know  it  through  anyone  else,  you  would  un- 
derstand —  that  I  —  that  7  could  never  have 
told  you." 

He  made  no  answer  —  they  stood,  facing  each 
other.  And  slowly  there  came  a  strange  look 
into  Jack's  eyes  —  a  look  which  Richarda  could 
not  fathom. 

Then  he  said :  "  I  think  I  understand, 
Lady." 

He  was  no  longer  looking  at  her  —  he  turned 
and  struck  an  idle  chord  on  the  piano  —  another. 
Then  facing  her  again,  but  still  with  eyes  that 
113 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

avoided  hers,  lie  added:  "  I  said  just  now  when 
I  was  playing  that  I  was  talking  to  you.  I 
was.  I  was  asking  you  something  —  something 
that  I  hardly  understood,  I  think.  But  now  I 
do.  I  know — " 

"  What  do  you  know  ?  "  The  question  was 
sharp ;  there  was  a  touch  of  defiance  in  it. 

"  I  know  — "  but  looking  at  her  now,  Jack 
hesitated.  "  It  really  doesn't  matter  what  I 
mean.  There's  no  reason  why  I  should  say  it. 
Because  —  you  know,  Lady." 

There  was  that  in  his  tone  which  made  Ri- 
charda  feel  as  if  someone  had  struck  her;  she 
turned  white.  Then  she  said  simply :  "  I  don't 
know  what  you  mean,  Jack." 

He  made  an  exclamation  —  it  sounded  con- 
temptuous. She  had  never  heard  anything  like 
that  from  Jack  before,  and  in  the  moment  she 
had  a  curious  thought  of  his  mother  as  she  had 
stood  in  this  room  and  told  her  the  truth  about 
the  child.  The  boy  had  never  seemed  so  inalien- 
ably one  with  that  mother  as  he  did  to  her  in 
this  instant;  she  shrank  from  him,  and  thought 
of  her  own  boy  up-stairs  with  a  bewildered 
yearning  for  him. 

"  Don't  let  us  try  to  shirk  it,"  said  Jack  — 
he  struck  the  sharp  corner  of  the  table  with  his 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

hand  and  felt  the  pain  as  the  edge  cut,  as  re- 
motely as  though  it  were  the  wound  of  another, 
for  a  deeper  pain  was  paramount  in  his  confusion 
of  mind  —  the  sort  of  pain  that  went  with  the 
slow  drip  of  blood  from  a  mortal  wound.  He 
was  losing  his  faith  in  something,  but  he  did  not 
realise  that  yet.  "  You  know  and  I  know  what 
the  truth  is.  But  I'm  not  blaming  you." 

"Blaming  me?" 

"  No.  But  what  is  the  use  pretending  that 
you  don't  understand  me?  " 

She  was  deadly  still  now  —  but  her  stillness 
acted  upon  him  like  wind  upon  flame. 

"Lady!  —  Don't!  —  don't  lie  to  me."  His 
face  was  as  white  as  her  own.  "  Don't  you  see 
that  at  last  I  understand?  " 

"  You  understand  what  ?  "  Her  lips  hardly 
moved.  She  was  wondering  with  a  strange  cu- 
riosity, how  she  was  to  bear  hearing  him  say 
that  he  knew  he  was  Homfrey's  son. 

It  infuriated  him  —  this  stubborn  resistance 
—  this  determination  not  to  meet  him  at  any 
point. 

"  Why  —  that  you  —  that  you  are  my 
mother." 

She  sat  down ;  as  she  did  so,  the  machinery 
which  constituted  her  a  living,  feeling  being 
115 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

seemed  quietly  to  stop.  Yet  in  a  moment  the 
colour  came  in  a  storm  back  to  her  face  ;  she 
was  thinking  of  Tim  —  what  did  anything  mat- 
ter so  long  as  he  was  safe  from  what  she  had 
feared  ? 

Jack  saw,  and  misunderstood.  "  Then  it  is 
true,  and  you  —  " 

She  was  on  her  feet.  "True?  —  That?  — 
What  you  said  just  now?  "  She  turned  from 
him  —  then  looked  at  him.  "  That  —  true  of 


Words  meant  nothing  in  such  a  pass  as  this  ; 
she  understood  why  sometimes  with  men  nothing 
but  the  bare  fist  and  a  blow  availed. 

But  the  next  moment  she  was  in  a  passion  of 
tears  —  it  was  a  long  time  before  she  lifted  her 
head. 

When  at  last  she  looked  up  her  face  was  a 
shock  to  Jack.  He  took  a  step  towards  her. 
But  she  ignored  him. 

She  began  to  speak  —  but  hardly  as  if  she 
were  speaking  to  him. 

"  To  think  that  you  —  that  you  who  have 
lived  with  me  all  these  years  —  that  you  could 
think  that  —  that  you  could  think  I  would  de- 
ceive like  that  —  that  you  could  think  that,  if 
you  were  mine,  anything  would  have  kept  me 
116 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

from  saying  so !     Is  that  all  you  have  learnt  of 
me  from  living  with  me,  Jack?  " 

With  a  moan  the  boy  turned  away  from  her; 
the  misery  that  had  been  in  her  face  seemed 
transferred  to  his. 

"  What  have  I  done  for  you,  Jack  —  why,  it 
has  all  been  worth  nothing  if  it  has  not  taught 
you  that  there  are  some  things  impossible  to  the 
sort  of  woman  that  I  am." 

The  tears  on  her  face  seemed  to  add  to  the 
dignity  with  which  she  spoke  —  the  truth  that 
was  in  her  was  triumphant  —  it  did  not  occur  to 
Jack  to  doubt  her. 

She  held  out  her  hand  to  him  and  he  came  to 
her.  All  his  world  was  wrong  again ;  he  was 
alone  once  more,  with  a  keener  sense  of  desola- 
tion than  before,  because  for  a  moment  he  had 
known  the  bitter  joy  of  believing  that  he  be- 
longed to  her.  He  felt  as  if  his  soul  had  lost 
its  God.  And  he  had  been  cruel  to  her  with  a 
cruelty  that  no  woman  could  forgive. 

"  If  you  knew  what  it  meant  to  me  to  be- 
lieve that,"  he  cried  —  "  If  you  knew  how  hard 
it  is  — " 

She  looked  at  him  with  tears.  "  Do  you 
think  I  don't  know?  " 

The  tears  were  in  his  own  eyes  now  —  those 
tears  that  were  so  difficult  for  him. 
117 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

"  Lady,  I  have  nothing  to  say,"  he  cried 
helplessly.  "  I'm  no  good.  Why  did  you  ever 
take  me  in  ?  " 

She  smiled  —  a  smile  so  sad  that  he  was 
stabbed  afresh.  "  It  was  the  hardest  thing  I 
ever  did,  Jack.  But  I  have  never  been  sorry." 

It  was  his  last  night  in  the  place  that  he  had 
called  home  —  because  of  her.  She  remem- 
bered that,  and  as  he  bade  her  good-night,  she 
said  to  him  with  lips  that  quivered :  "  Is  it  well 
between  us,  Jack?  " 

He  answered  her  with  eyes  that  adored. 

But  in  the  days  that  followed  she  was  haunted 
by  the  horror  of  what  he  had  said. 

If  Jack  had  been  able  to  think  that  —  but 
there  she  paused.  It  was  not  possible  to  her  to 
follow  that  suggestion. 

But  the  thought  she  would  not  tolerate  left 
its  mark  upon  her.  She  became  conscious  of  a 
certain  bitterness  in  herself;  she  rebelled  as 
never  before,  at  the  mystery  of  things  —  at 
the  meaning  of  pain ;  at  the  strange  sacrifices 
that  love  seemed  called  upon  to  make. 

Nevertheless  her  thoughts  always  led  her  back 
to  the  simplicity  of  her  early  resolution.  She 
must  maintain  her  ideal  of  marriage  at  any  cost. 
118 


Her  horror,  of  the  fact  that  Jack  was  her  hus- 
band's son  would  be  as  great  now  —  if  she  had 
to  endure  the  humiliation  to  her  love  of  admit- 
ting to  Homf rey  her  knowledge  of  this  —  as  it 
had  been  when  she  first  learned  of  it. 

And  the  years  between  had  only  added  to  her 
power  to  maintain  silence;  every  faculty  was 
trained  to  that  end. 

Into  an  abstraction  she  had  breathed  the 
breath  of  life ;  her  ideal  of  marriage  had  become 
to  her  as  the  living  God. 


119 


CHAPTER  VIII 

Mrs.  Dawson  idolised  her  husband,  but  she 
cherished  in  regard  to  him  a  belief  quite  common 
to  women  of  little  imagination  and  excellent 
morals,  who  happen  to  have  married  men  of  su- 
perior character  —  she  was  rooted  in  the  convic- 
tion that  he  owed  his  nature  to  her  influence. 
True,  he  would  not  go  to  church.  But  his  word 
was  worth  as  much  as  his  bond,  and  she  hoped 
the  good  Lord  would  ultimately  accept,  in  his 
case,  the  substitution  of  moral  for  more  dog- 
matically defined  spiritual  credentials. 

It  was  her  opinion  that  of  men  in  the  mass, 
the  less  said  the  better.  They  appeared  to  be 
born  with  an  objection  to  folding  up  the  news- 
paper after  they  had  read  it,  and  with  a  desire 
to  know  what  you  had  done  with  what  they  had 
lost,  which  you  had  never  even  seen.  The  fact 
that  women  like  herself  were  occasionally  their 
mothers  and  wives  was  presumably  all  that  made 
them  possible  from  one  generation  to  the  next. 

It  was  inevitable  that  Dawson  should  go  to 
the  Homfreys'  house  much  more  often  than 
120 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

Homfrey  went  to  his.  The  atmosphere  of  the 
one  place  was  that  in  which  men  felt  naturally 
at  ease. 

This  evening  happened  to  be  one  of  the  rare 
occasions  when  Dawson  brought  his  wife  with 
him.  Conversation  lagged  somewhat,  but  Mrs. 
Dawson  did  not  observe  that ;  she  had  her  knit- 
ting, and  after  she  had  discussed  the  weather 
and  the  children  and  her  new  coot,  with  Ri- 
charda,  she  relapsed  into  contented  silence ;  there 
was  nothing  further  to  talk  about. 

Then  Richarda  gratefully  enlarged  her  bor- 
ders. "  I  didn't  tell  you,  did  I,  Tim?"— her 
glance  included  Dawson  — "  that  I  had  a  letter 
from  Hattie  Lewin  to-day.  Old  Mrs.  Lewin  is 
dead  —  she  died  of  pneumonia  quite  surpris- 
ingly. And  now  Hattie's  certain  that  Mr. 
Lewin  thinks  she  ought  to  go  to  him." 

"  Wasn't  she  at  the  funeral  ?  "  asked  Hom- 
frey. 

"  Oh  no.     She  says  she  hates  funerals." 

"  Who  does  she  suppose  enjoys  them?  "  mur- 
mured Dawson.  "  What  a  self-sacrificing 
woman  she  is !  " 

"  It  never  once  entered  into  her  calculations 
that  the  old  lady  could  actually  '  up  and  die,' 
as  she  puts  it,  and  when  Tommy  kept  on  sending 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

telegrams,  she  kept,  on  answering  them  encourag- 
ingly." 

Homfrey  laughed. 

"  Yes,  I  know,"  said  Richarda  as  if  in  an- 
swer to  his  thought :  "  But  Hattie  has  been  so 
unfortunate." 

"Unfortunate?" 

"  Of  course  she  has.  She  ought  to  have 
married  young,  and  quite  a  different  sort  of  man 
I  think.  She  was  thirty-seven  when  she  mar- 
ried Tommy  Lewin  —  it  wasn't  like  a  girl  fall- 
ing in  love  —  and  he  really  wasn't  the  sort  of 
man  Hattie  would  have  turned  her  head  to  look 
at  if—" 

— "  if  he  hadn't  been  such  an  excellent  busi- 
ness proposition,"  remarked  Dawson.  "  She 
makes  me  think  of  the  modern  addition  to  the 
adage,  Children  should  be  seen  and  not  heard  — 
Why  seen  ?  That  appears  to  be  her  theory  with 
regard  to  Tommy." 

"  Yes,  it  does  rather,"  assented  Richarda. 
"  Her  letter  is  so  funny.  She  says  that  when 
she  heard  Mrs.  Lewin  was  really  dead,  she  made 
a  great  effort  to  enter  into  Tommy's  feelings  and 
be  sympathetic — " 

— "  by  wire,"  interpolated  Homfrey. 

— "  And  now  she  thinks  that  was  the  great- 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

est  mistake  she  could  have  made ;  because  ever 
since,  Tommy  has  been  clamouring  to  know 
when  she  will  arrive.  And  she  always  goes 
abroad  at  this  time  of  year.  And  now  she's 
afraid  that  he  will  want  to  go  too.  She  says 
he  doesn't  seem  to  realise  the  nature  of  their 
marriage  in  the  least.  She  calls  him  a  clammy 
idealist  —  the  kind  of  man  who  idealises  his 
relation  to  his  mother,  and  then  wants  to  inflict 
the  same  misery  on  his  wife." 

"  What's  the  matter  with  Tommy  ? "  ex- 
claimed Dawson.  "  Why,  he's  got  a  cinch  on 
that  wife  of  his.  All  he  has  to  do  to  bring  her 
to  time  is  to  stop  supplies." 

"  Yes,  but  he's  not  that  sort." 

"  More's  the  pity.  He  idealises,  when  what 
she  needs  is  a  sand-bagging.  That's  the  only 
way  to  deal  with  women  of  that  type." 

Mrs.  Dawson  had  stopped  knitting;  she  was 
listening  to  the  conversation,  which  impressed 
her  as  curious. 

"  She  says  old  Mrs.  Lewin  could  not  have 
planned  a  more  malicious  act,"  continued  Ri- 
charda.  "  She's  afraid  that  from  now  on  Tom- 
my is  going  to  be  a  disturbing  factor  in  her  life." 

This  was  going  beyond  Mrs.  Dawson's  pow- 
ers of  endurance.  "  Do  I  understand  that  the 
123 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

man  is  her  husband?  "  she  asked  with  dignity. 

"  Yes,  my  dear,"  said  Dawson  quickly,  "  but 
he  drinks." 

"  Oh ! "  Mrs.  Dawson  was  a  woman  of  anti- 
alcoholic  convictions.  "  Still  as  he  is  her  hus- 
band—" 

"  But  the  case  is  exceptional.  This  man  has 
probably  drunk  enough  to  drown  himself  in." 

"  Oh !  "  Mrs.  Dawson  declined  upon  her  reflec- 
tions, which  were  concerned  with  wondering 
whether  a  woman  of  a  different  sort  from  this 
wife  might  not  have  influenced  this  man  in  a 
better  direction.  But  on  second  thought  she 
glanced  doubtfully  at  Dawson  —  one  never  could 
be  quite  sure  —  a  man's  sense  of  humour  is  a 
strange  thing. 

"  After  all,  the  woman's  delicious,"  exclaimed 
Homfrey.  "  She's  so  frank." 

"  Yes,  and  to  me  too,  when  she  knows  what  I 
think? "  Richarda  smiled,  remembering  some 
things  in  that  letter.  "  She  says  that  Tommy 
is  not  an  ordinary  man  —  that  he  has  a  way  of 
sticking  in  your  mind  that  is  most  trying." 

"  She's  a  star  humorist,"  said  Dawson.  "  She 
ought  to  be  printed  or  platformed.  Now  if 
Tommy's  sense  of  humour  were  only  equal  to 
hers  — " 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

— "  Ah  yes !  But  I'm  afraid  he  loves  her," 
interrupted  Richarda. 

Homfrey  looked  quizzically  at  his  wife  — 
they  had  all  risen,  as  the  Dawsons  were  going  — 
"  You  mean  that  when  a  man  loves  a  woman,  his 
sense  of  humour  necessarily  deserts  him?  " 

Richarda  made  a  little  outward  gesture  with 
her  hands  —  her  colour  rose  —  she  did  not  turn 
her  eyes  from  Mrs.  Dawson's  serenely  rounded 
countenance.  "  If  you  were  a  woman  you 
would  know  it  does." 

Then  she  laughed  —  that  light  chill  laugh 
which  Homfrey  never  heard  without  wondering; 
it  did  not  belong  in  his  conception  of  his  wife. 

He  walked  out  to  the  street  with  the  Dawsons ; 
when  he  came  back  he  found  Richarda  curled  up 
in  the  big  chair  —  she  looked  tired.  But  she 
began  to  talk  —  it  occurred  to  Homfrey  that 
she  was  a  more  nervous  woman  than  she  used 
to  be. 

"  That's  a  curious  marriage."  She  indicated 
the  Dawsons  with  a  gesture.  "  How  a  man  like 
Mr.  Dawson  — " 

"  It's  an  ideal  marriage,"  said  Homfrey. 
"  As  marriages  go." 

Richarda  laughed.  "  You  make  me  think  of 
what  Edith  Merson  said  to  me  the  other  day 
125 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

about  the  Ransoms.  *  Oh  yes,  Mrs.  Homfrey, 
they're  a  perfectly  congenial  couple  —  just  as 
happy  as  two  people  can  be  after  being  married 
ten  3rears.' ' 

"  Edith  Merson !  What  does  she  know  about 
it?  That's  the  up-to-date  bachelor-girl  who 
thinks  marriage  is  an  open  book  to  her,"  com- 
mented Homfrey.  "  But  the  Dawsons  —  why, 
Mrs.  Dawson's  practicality  of  mind  unmarred 
by  any  suspicion  of  humour  makes  her  the  one 
woman  for  Henry.  It  will  not  occur  to  her  for 
a  long  time  that  when  Dawson  said  Lewin  drank, 
he  meant  water  or  tea.  That  kind  of  thing 
amuses  Dawson  perennially.  It  would  irritate 
me  to  the  murder  point.  But  Mrs.  Dawson  is  a 
woman  of  the  finest  domestic  ability  —  she  has 
run  their  house  on  ten  dollars  a  week  when  she 
had  to,  and  she  would  again.  The  woman  is  a 
power  in  her  own  place.  Dawson  knows  that 
and  respects  her  for  it.  As  for  the  rest " — 
Homfrey  looked  at  his  wife,  this  curious,  con- 
tradictory Charda,  who  had  fascination  in  her 
very  finger-tips  — "  well,  I  have  often  thought 
that  Dawson  did  not  miss  some  things  in  his  wife 
that  he  might  have  missed  —  if  it  had  not  been 
for  you." 

"Forme?" 

126 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

Homfrey  laughed.  "  My  dear  Charda, 
there  is  nothing  out  of  the  way  in  that.  You 
have  a  great  many  charms  that  interest  a  man 
—  my  being  your  husband  does  not  prevent  my 
seeing  that,  and  — " 

"  Tim !  " 

But  Homfrey  laughed  again ;  he  had  a  sud- 
den desire  to  torment  Richarda. 

"  My  dear,  Dawson  is  the  most  faithful  of 
husbands.  It  has  never  occurred  to  him  that  he 
could  be  anything  else.  But  he  has  never  missed 
some  things,  because  he  knows  you.  You  keep 
him  charmed.  He  does  not  realise  how  dull  his 
home  life  is,  because  he  can  always  come  and 
see  you.  He  thinks  of  course,  that  he  comes  to 
see  me." 

"  How  interesting !  " 

"  Isn't  it?  Dawson  is  not  analytical.  He 
feels  something  I  daresay,  when  he  looks  at  the 
shape  of  your  arm.  He  feels  happy,  and  he 
associates  that  feeling  with  coming  to  see  me." 

"  How  interesting !  "  said  Richarda  again. 

"  Yes.     You  see,  you  have  a  beautiful  arm." 

"  I  know  it,"  she  said  calmly.  "  It  is  a  mere 
matter  of  accident,  and  has  nothing  to  do  with 
what  is  I." 

"  I  question  that.  At  any  rate,  it's  the  sort 
127 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

of  accident  that  has  a  good  deal  to  do  with  what 
is  men." 

Richarda  looked  at  her  husband.  "  I  found 
that  out  a  long  time  ago." 

"  What?  " 

"  The  difference  between  the  woman's  and  the 
man's  point  of  view." 

Homfrey  laughed.  "  I  suppose  all  women 
think  they  understand  that  sooner  or  later." 

"  Probably.  I  wonder  why  men  flatter  them- 
selves that  it's  hard  to  understand."  She 
laughed  —  that  laugh  again.  "It's  so  simple. 
One  merely  parts  with  one's  ideals  — •  and  there 
you  are ! " 

"  Why  Charda  !  "  Homfrey  felt  some  slight 
astonishment.  Then  he  smiled.  What  did  she 
think  she  understood?  But  she  was  speaking 
again. 

"  It  never  seems  to  occur  to  men  that  women, 
even  fools,  know  a  good  deal  about  them.  For 
there  is  nothing  that  a  woman  has  as  much 
chance  to  understand  as  she  has  to  understand 
a  man." 

"  One  man.     But  not  men." 

She  smiled.  "  One  grain  of  sand  —  can  you 
tell  it  from  another?  "  Then  her  mood  seemed 
to  change.  "  Don't  let  us  talk  about  it.  It's 
128 


all  so  stupid.  It  doesn't  matter  in  the  least 
what  men  think  of  women,  or  women  of  men. 
It  doesn't  alter  anything.  It  all  goes  on  hap- 
pening just  the  same  —  your  goodness  or  my 
badness  or  Mrs.  Dawson's  dullness.  That  was 
all  settled  long  before  we  had  anything  to  do 
with  ourselves." 

"  Charda,  what  a  mood !  " 

"  No.  It's  merely  a  point  of  view.  Didn't 
it  ever  occur  to  you,  Tim,  that  perhaps  you 
know  only  a  little  about  my  point  of  view? 
Most  men  wouldn't  of  course.  But  you  —  you 
are  discriminating.  How  is  it  that  you  don't?  " 

Homfrey  smoked,  and  looked  at  her,  content 
to  enjoy  the  moment;  she  had  never  seemed  to 
him  more  fascinating.  She  was  taking  herself 
seriously  —  she,  who  had  been  protected  from 
every  wind  that  blew  —  whose  weightiest  respon- 
sibility was  the  choosing  of  a  gown,  or  the  or- 
dering of  a  dinner!  But  he  did  not  mind,  so 
long  as  the  charm  of  the  woman  was  the  para- 
mount impression  induced  by  her  innocent  pose. 

"  Come  here,"  he  said  in  the  tone  that  was  a 
caress ;  he  held  out  his  hand. 

She  was  standing  by  the  table;  she  turned 
and  looked  at  him  —  a  little  exclamation  es- 
caped her  lips.  She  understood;  he  wanted  to 
129 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

kiss  her ;  he  always  did  when  he  looked  like  that. 
She  laughed  lightly,  but  her  throat  felt  sud- 
denly hot ;  she  stepped  to  the  further  side  of  the 
table  —  away  from  him. 

"  I  wonder  what  is  the  use  of  being  a  good 
woman,"  she  said  in  a  thinking  voice.  "I  don't 
quite  see.  I  wonder  if  men  have  ever  loved  a 
good  woman  as  they  have  loved  a  bad  one.  I 
think  not.  It's  all  very  complicated,  isn't  it? 
I  suppose  it  always  will  be.  It's  funny,  you 
know  — "  she  paused  a  moment  —  "  to  think 
that  a  man's  way  of  loving  a  good  woman  or  a 
bad  one  is  just  the  same." 

"  Charda,  you  mustn't  say  things  like  that." 

"  But  if  I'm  made  to  think  them?  " 

"  What  nonsense !  What's  the  matter  to- 
night?" 

"  Nothing  —  nothing."  But  he  saw  that  she 
was  breathless.  "  Only  sometimes  one  longs  to 
say  the  absurd  thing  just  to  hear  what  it  sounds 
like.  Don't  you  think  so  ?  "  She  flashed  at  him 
a  look  —  brilliant,  defiant. 

Homfrey  waited. 

She  stepped  back  and  leaned  against  the  wall. 

"Oh,  I'm  thinking  —  thinking — "  she  said  in 

a  sing-song  to  which  she  beat  time  with  a  light 

foot — "I'm  thinking,  what  would  you  say  — 

130 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

No,  I  won't  —  I  won't."  She  broke  off  in  a 
tone  that  baffled  him. 

"  Charda." 

"  Dear,  I  will  be  good  —  and  serious."  She 
made  a  charming  face  at  him.  "  I  won't  laugh 
at  the  big  muddle  any  more.  But  — " 

"  Charda,  come  here !  " 

"  Tim,  come  here !  "  she  mimicked. 

He  jumped  up.  But  when  she  felt  his  arms 
about  her,  she  said  strangely :  "  Tim,  I  think 
I  shall  die  if  you  kiss  me  now." 

He  laughed ;  his  blood  was  keen  for  the  sense 
of  her  lips.  And  the  tears  in  her  eyes  when  he 
let  her  go  were  as  the  last  touch  to  his  enjoy- 
ment. 

"  Charda,  you  make  a  fool  of  a  man." 

She  quivered  —  and  smiled. 

"Do  you  love  me?"  he  said.  "Tell  me  — 
do  you?  "  He  held  her  hands  tight  in  his. 

"  How  should  I  know,  if  you  don't.  Love? 
— "  she  paused  as  if  listening  to  the  word. 
"  No,  I  don't  think  I  know  what  it  means, 
Tim." 

"  You  actually  — " 

Her  light  figure  stiffened ;  she  threw  out  her 
hands  as  if  to  fling  something  from  her. 

"  Charda,  do  you  mean  to  say  that  you  have 
131 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

lived  all  these  years  with  me  —  my  wife  —  and 
have  never  known  that  what  I  felt  for  you  and 
what  you  felt  for  me,  was  — 

"  Don't  say  it,  Tim."  Then  she  added  with 
a  lack  of  emphasis  which  was  emphasis  a  hun- 
dred-fold: "  I  hate  that  word." 

He  looked  at  her  with  an  expression  that  was 
hostile,  menacing. 

"  You  say  that  to  me  ?  " 

"  Yes  —  to  you,"  she  said  slowly. 

He  stepped  back.  "  You're  a  strange  woman, 
Charda."  He  too  spoke  quietly.  "  For  one 
thing,  you  lie.  Do  you  think  I  could  love  you 
as  I  do  to-day  if  you  did  not  feel  just  as  I  do, 
the  love  that  flows  from  you  to  me,  and  from  me 
to  you?  You  dare  not  deny  it.  Now,  as  I 
kiss  you  —  "  he  took  her  in  his  arms  again ;  he 
could  not  not  see  her  face,  but  her  little  hand, 
trembling  in  his,  spoke  for  her. 

"  Say  that  you  love  me,"  he  whispered. 

For  answer  he  felt  her  tears  upon  his  face; 
he  wondered  confusedly  what  had  induced  this 
transcendent  moment  between  them. 

But  it  passed;  he  kissed  her  again  lightly, 
and  cast  a  look  at  his  book;  then  picked  it  up 
and  glanced  at  a  paragraph  he  had  read  to 
Dawson. 

132 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

"  Dear  old  Dawson !  "  he  exclaimed  —  it  was 
a  relief  perhaps,  to  transfer  his  still  vibrating 
emotions  to  another  sphere  — "  he  got  talking 
in  the  office  this  morning  about  his  boy  —  it's 
frightful  that  after  all  these  years  a  man  can 
suffer  like  that  over  the  loss  of  a  child.  He 
said  to  me :  '  There's  my  wife ; —  she  has  an 
outfit  of  beliefs  that  comfort  her.  She  thinks 
she  knows  that  somewhere  there  is  a  God,  and 
that  He's  keeping  her  boy  for  her.  I'd  sing 
and  shout  all  day  long  if  I  believed  that.  You 
couldn't  keep  me  still.  What's  the  matter  with 
these  religious  people  who  say  they  believe  all 
the  things  a  man  wants  to  believe?  ' —  You  know 
how  he  talks,  Charda,  when  he  gets  going.  He 
said  he  would  give  anything  to  be  able  to  think 
he  believed  what  his  wife  did,  but  that  he  would 
never  lie  to  himself  for  the  sake  of  peace." 

Homf rey  was  silent  for  some  moments ;  then 
he  added :  "  That's  what  I  call  a  good  man." 

Richarda  looked  at  her  husband,  as  Dawson 
had  often  looked  and  wondered. 

For  here  was  a  man  who  had  started  in  life 
with  many  of  the  elements  which  go  to  the  mak- 
ing of  a  brilliant  scamp  —  given  a  certain  rare 
quality  of  temptation.  And  yet,  at  forty-five, 
Homfrey  presented  to  the  world  a  character 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

which  might  have  passed  as  the  product  of 
prayer  and  much  fasting.  Dawson  questioned 
often  whether  he  owed  his  increasing  sensitive- 
ness to  ethical  values  to  the  transparent  truth- 
fulness of  his  wife's  nature.  For  Richarda  was 
incapable  of  the  petty  subterfuges  —  the  in- 
competent lies  by  the  very  futility  of  which 
many  good  women  argue  themselves  unperjured 
—  the  telling  of  a  lie  which  accomplishes  its  end 
being  surely  a  sin,  but  the  telling  of  one  Avhich 
ultimately  proves  ineffective,  being,  from  their 
point  of  view,  a  certain  testimony  to  the  incor- 
ruptible uprightness  of  their  souls. 

But  if  Homfrey's  nature  had  in  it  the  germs 
of  the  scamp,  it  had  also  a  pre-destination 
towards  a  rigid  elegance  of  thought  and  action 
• —  a  species  of  refined  righteousness  not  inevi- 
tably the  result  of  prayer  and  much  fasting. 

The  world  had  gone  very  well  with  him,  but 
only  lately  had  he  been  able  to  feel  that  the  ele- 
ments of  peace  had  entered  his  home  to  abide 
there.  He  was  able  deliberately  to  drop  the 
boy  Jack  from  his  thoughts,  now  that  he  so 
rarely  saw  him ;  Richarda  might  go  to  Waverley 
when  she  would ;  he  had  nothing  to  say  to  that. 
When  the  first  summer  vacation  after  the  boy 
had  entered  college  became  due,  he  and  Richarda 
134 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

and  Dick  were  already  far  on  their  way  to  for- 
eign wanderings,  and  Jack  had  entered  the 
Summer  School,  for  he  meant  to  graduate  in 
three  years  if  possible ;  he  was  impatient  to  feel 
free  of  Homfrey's  beneficence,  and  he  pictured 
to  himself  frequently  a  scene  of  great  dignity 
when  he  should  repay  all  that  he  had  cost  a 
hostile  patron. 

But  in  that  view,  he  wronged  Homfrey,  who 
had  never  regarded  that  expenditure  as  other 
than  his  wife's.  If  she  chose  to  use  her  money 
for  such  purpose,  well  and  good ;  the  affair  was 
none  of  his.  He  would  have  scorned  to  make  it 
difficult  for  her  to  do  as  she  desired.  His  in- 
come had  become  a  large  one,  but  he  was  a  man 
of  exclusive  taste,  and  not  tempted  to  spend  for 
spectacular  effect  —  he  spent  only  when  money 
got  for  him  what  he  desired  —  never  for  the 
sake  of  impressing  his  neighbours  with  the  fact 
that  he  could  have  what  he  did  not  want.  And 
as,  upon  this  point,  Richarda  and  he  were  of 
one  mind,  they  were  relieved  of  the  burden  of 
keeping  up  a  vain  show  in  order  to  indicate 
their  importance  to  people  who  were  of  no  im- 
portance to  them. 

But  when  it  came  to  the  question  of  his  wife's 
rights  as  to  money,  Homfrey  was  liberal  to  the 
135 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

point  of  extravagance.  It  had  become  a  rule  of 
life  with  him,  to  remember  that  when  he  married 
her,  he  had  not  bought  her  conscience  with  his 
wedding-fee.  He  realised  that  he  had  been 
forced  to  that  point  of  view  by  a  woman  strong 
enough  to  hold  her  own  against  him,  but  his 
consciousness  of  this  was  not  bitter.  For  in 
his  outlook  upon  life  he  had  entered  into  the 
possession  of  a  breadth  of  vision  that  lifted  him 
at  times  into  the  ranks  of  the  saints  and  the 
seers. 


136 


CHAPTER  IX 

When  the  Homfreys  reached  home  after  a 
delightfully  wearisome  foreign  trip,  there  was 
a  letter  from  Jack  waiting  to  welcome  Rich- 
arda.  He  enclosed  a  poem ;  as  she  read  it  she 
had  a  bewildered  feeling  that  something  must 
have  happened  to  Jack  since  she  saw  him  last  — 
this  was  not  Jack  the  boy,  whose  ways  and 
thoughts  she  knew  so  well.  This  poem  might 
have  been  written  by  a  man  of  any  age ;  it  pro- 
claimed a  range  of  experience  possible  only  for 
the  boy  to  possess  imaginatively,  but  what  an 
endowment  this  indicated ! 

Her  pride  was  touched ;  it  was  inevitable  that 
she  should  show  the  poem  to  Homfrey. 

He  glanced  at  it.  "  Oh,  he's  in  that 
stage  !  — "  then  he  laid  it  down,  but  partly  read. 

She  bit  her  lip.  "  Oh,  Tim,  don't  you  see 
how  clever  it  is  ?  " 

Homfrey  smiled.  "  What  a  gift  of  idealis- 
ing you  have,  Charda.  Of  course  it's  clever. 
A  boy  in  his  twenties  is  prone  to  just  that  sort 
of  cleverness.  Naturally,  I  hope  for  your  sake 
137 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

that  the  youngster  will  go  on  and  immortalise 
himself,  which  is  what  you  evidently  expect  of 
him.  But  that  would  make  you  unendurable  to 
live  with  —  you'd  be  so  everlastingly  proud  of 
your  discernment  for  the  rest  of  your  life." 

Richarda  smiled.  But  she  showed  no  more 
poems  to  Homfrey. 

The  next  day  she  had  a  long-distance  talk 
with  Jack;  his  vociferous  pleasure  in  the  mere 
sound  of  her  voice,  warmed  her  heart. 

"  Oh,  I'm  up  to  my  eyes  in  everything,"  he 
said  joyously.  "  It's  great  to  live  in  such  a 
rush.  Wish  I  could  see  you  though.  Tell  you 
what  —  you  come  out  on  Saturday  morning  — 
we  play  Chicago  in  the  afternoon  —  you'd  love 
that.  Then  we'll  have  dinner  at  the  house  with 
all  the  fellows  —  great !  All  right !  I'll  meet 
the  eleven-forty.  And  say,  you'll  look  your 
very  stunningest,  won't  you,  Lady?  " 

She  laughed.     "  I'll  do  what  I  can." 

When  she  stepped  from  the  car  on  Saturday 
morning,  and  was  caught  by  a  tall  boy  in  a 
whirlwind  of  question  and  embrace,  she  knew  by 
the  look  in  his  eyes  —  eyes  that  said  easily  dan- 
gerously much  —  that  she  was  approved. 

"  Oh. Gee!"  he  exclaimed  when  he  had  disen- 
tangled her  from  the  crowd  —  a  crowd  typical 
138 


of  an  approaching  great  game  —  and  was  able 
to  stand  admiringly  aloof  from  her :  — "  Aren't 
you  great !  " 

She  laughed  like  a  girl  —  his  high  spirits 
were  infectious. 

"  Oh  Jack,  it's  so  good  to  see  you,  and  aren't 
you  splendid !  " 

They  both  laughed;  it  was  all  like  old  times 
again,  and  the  sun  was  shining  with  a  soft  No- 
vember radiance  that  put  its  brassy  summer-time 
brilliance  to  shame. 

"  We'll  drive  up  —  but  put  the  top  down, 
George,"  he  said  to  the  coloured  man,  who 
awaited  them,  open  door  in  hand.  "  I  don't 
often  have  a  chance  to  show  myself  in  such 
company,"  he  added  explanatorily. 

They  got  in,  and  after  a  moment's  delay,  were 
followed  by  a  woman  and  a  girl  of  unmistake- 
ably  rural  appearance.  Richarda  looked  at 
Jack. 

"  Oh,  that's  all  right.  We  share  our  privi- 
leges here,"  he  said  gaily.  "  Tell  me  —  where 
did  you  get  that  hat  ?  " 

"  In  Paris."  She  made  an  attempt  at  pri- 
vacy of  tone. 

"  Paris !  Well,  it  hits  the  bull's  eye  every 
time.  And  the  suit  ?  " 

139 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

"  In  Paris,  too,"  she  murmured.  Mother  and 
maid  now  gazed  at  her  with  stolid  eyes. 

"  Gee !  Don't  I  wish  you  were  ticketed.  But 
to  the  initiated  you  are,  and  the  rest  don't 
count." 

Like  a  pair  of  irresponsible  children,  they 
broke  into  a  fresh  peal  of  mirth,  while  the  slow 
moving  eyes  opposite  frankly  and  laboriously 
traversed  Richarda's  outfit,  with  the  evident  ob- 
ject of  impressing  its  "  stylishness  "  upon  minds 
which  were  open  to  influences  from  "  Paris." 

"  Do  let  us  behave,"  said  Richarda  weakly. 
"  This  is  awful,  Jack.  You  corrupt  my  morals." 

"  Well,  did  you  ever  hear  the  likes  of  that?  " 
demanded  Jack  of  the  space  between  the  heads 
of  the  two  women.  "  Especially  when  you  hap- 
pen to  remember  — 

'  Who  taught  me  how  to  lie  and  steal, 
And  sneaking  blow  to  swiftly  deal  ? — ' ' 

he  paused;  then   added  with   uplifted  benedic- 
tory hand: 

"  My  Mother ! '  " 

The  mother  opposite  was  transformed  into  a 
graven  image. 

"  Jack,  you're  impossible." 
"  Yes,  ain't  I  ?  "     For  a  moment  he  drooped, 
140 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

a  spectacle  of  repentance;  then  he  revived  and 
said  brightly :  "  I  musn't  forget  to  mention  it, 
now  that  we're  alone.  I've  got  engaged  to  three 
girls.  What  do  you  think  we  had  better  do 
about  it?" 

"  Arrest  you  on  the  charge  of  an  intention 
to  bigamize,  I  should  think." 

"  But  I  don't  want  to  marry  them  all,  really. 
I'm  far  too  shy  to  propose  to  any  girl,  but  in 
this  match  factory,  that  doesn't  matter  —  the 
girls  do  that,  and  when  they  ask  me  to  be  theirs, 
I  haven't  the  heart  to  refuse  them.  I  don't 
know  what  to  do  about  it.  If  they'd  only  con- 
sent to  draw  lots  for  me!  But  they  won't. 
They  all  want  me,  and  won't  take  any  other, 
even  though  warranted  just  as  good,  and  guar- 
anteed for  one  year.  It's  awful  to  be  the  object 
of  three  unrequited  female  affections." 

"  Jack,  be  quiet,"  said  Richarda.  The  rural 
mother  looked  now  as  if  she  contemplated  get- 
ting out  at  the  next  corner. 

"  Yes'M,"  lisped  Jack  meekly. 

After  a  pause  Richarda  inquired :  "  Do  you 
know  everybody  ? "  His  hat  was  more  fre- 
quently off  his  head  than  on. 

"  No,  not  every  one,"  he  admitted.  Then  he 
added  naively :  "  I'm  rather  popular,  Lady." 
141 


She  smiled ;  her  soft  eyes  said  sweet  things, 
and  he  was  happy. 

They  left  the  carriage  at  the  campus,  and 
loitered  up  the  Lake  Walk  in  the  sunshine  — 
then  sat  down  outside  the  library,  and  watched 
the  ebb  and  flow  about  them.  Women  and  men, 
boys  and  girls,  hurrying,  sauntering ;  grave  and 
gay  —  it  seemed  to  Richarda  that  there  passed 
in  review  before  her  every  possible  type  of  stu- 
dent. The  girls  were  generally  of  the  sort 
pre-destined  to  the  earning  of  bread-and-butter ; 
they  did  not  impress  her  as  apt  to  be  ensnarers 
of  young  affections. 

"  I  haven't  seen  a  pretty  one  yet,"  she  re- 
marked at  last. 

"  Tisn't  any  place  for  pretty  girls,"  said 
Jack  shortly.  "  Anybody's  a  fool  who  lets  a 
pretty  girl  come  to  a  place  like  this.  Maybe 
she  has  a  good  time  all  right  —  Oh  sure !  But 
she'll  be  spoilt  all  right,  too.  Some  funny 
things  happen  here,  Lady." 

Richarda  felt  a  chill;  she  knew  that  Jack 
must  be  growing  in  the  knowledge  of  many 
things  fronr  which  instinctively  she  would  have 
shielded  him.  But  it  had  to  come.  She  sighed 
as  she  thought  that  a  pure  woman  knows  her 
purity  impregnable,  but  the  man ! 


"  Why  do  they  have  co-education  then?  "  she 
asked  lamely. 

"  The  devil  is  supposed  to  know,"  said  Jack. 
"  But  I  know  this  —  that  if  I  had  a  sister,  she'd 
never  come  here." 

A  group  of  fellows  came  by ;  Jack  excused 
himself  and  joined  them,  and  was  instantly  the 
central  figure  among  them  — "  Homfrey !  " — 
again  and  again  she  heard  the  name,  and  it  came 
to  her  with  force  that  the  name  this  boy  bore 
would  never  be  borne  inconspicuously ;  it  was 
small  wonder  that  he  wished  to  be  able  to  ac- 
count for  himself.  She  felt  a  sudden  desperate 
fear.  There  was  no  chance  of  keeping  a  boy 
like  this  in  the  safe  seclusion  of  mediocrity. 
This  was  the  rare  creature  of  which  the  world 
one  day  takes  notice,  and  straightway  demands 
information.  It  would  fall  upon  her  to  make 
answer,  and  what  should  she  say? 

She  began  to  tremble,  and  she  was  tired  of 
being  afraid.  She  wondered  what  it  would  be 
like  if  she  went  home  to-night,  and  walked  into 
the  library  and  sat  down  beside  Homfrey,  and 
just  told  him  the  story.  Ah,  she  knew!  It 
would  be  like  walking  off  the  edge  of  her 
world. 

Jack  hurried  back  to  her.  "  Look  —  quick ! 
143 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

—  down  the  Lake  Walk.     It's  Maxwell  coming. 
He's  the  whole  thing  here.     Look  at  him !     Oh, 
he's  used  to  being  stared  at  —  he  expects  it." 

Richarda  looked,  and  saw,  coming  slowly 
towards  the  library  entrance  a  man  of  perhaps 
forty-five  —  a  man  at  first  gaze  dark  and  heavy 
of  face,  with  a  powerful  figure,  and  a  walk  that 
was  a  glorified  slouch.  He  looked  neither  to  the 
right  nor  to  the  left ;  his  eyes  were  fixed  on  the 
walk  before  him,  but  he  came  on  like  a  Jugger- 
naut with  a  manner  that  was  an  unconscious 
proclamation :  "  Get  out  of  my  way,  or  be 
damned  if  you  don't." 

As  he  drew  nearer,  Richarda  saw  that  his  jaw 
looked  as  if  clamped  to  his  face,  yet  the  line  of 
it  was  delicately  sensitive.  His  eyes  —  for  he 
lifted  them  and  threw  a  glance  at  her  and  a 
curt  nod  to  Homfrey  as  he  passed,  and  then  an- 
other glance  at  her,  openly  admiring,  bold,  and 
indifferent  —  his  eyes  were  deep  and  melan- 
choly. The  whole  man  was  in  them  —  the  pessi- 
mist, dulled  of  enthusiasm  by  despair;  the  ideal- 
ist, forever  in  quest  of  the  Grail. 

But  the  casual  observer  saw  nothing  of  this 

—  to  him,  the  noted  professor  merely  appeared 
more  of  a  gentleman  and  a  rake  than  was  quite 
seemly  for  a  man  who  had  the  reputation  of  a 

144 


ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 


scholar,  and  the  respectability  of  Waverly  as  a 
background. 

Two  girls,  evidently  "  co-eds  "  sat  down  on 
the  bench  beside  Richarda.  "  Isn't  he  awful?  " 
said  one.  "  I  don't  see  why  they  keep  him  here. 
I  call  him  the  Sulky  Mastiff." 

"  The  boys  like  him." 

"The  boys?  —  yes,  I  guess  they  do.  Per- 
haps they  wouldn't  like  him  so  well  if  he  stopped 
guying  the  women.  I  call  it  a  cheap  way  for  a 
man  to  make  himself  popular." 

"  Well,  there's  one  thing  —  he  slams  the  Fac- 
ulty about  as  badly  as  he  does  the  women." 

"  That's  true,"  remarked  Jack  as  he  and 
Richarda  walked  away.  "  He  seems  to  bunch 
the  women  and  the  Faculty  together  on  the  prin- 
ciple that  they  all,  like  sheep,  are  fools,  and  only 
fit  to  bleat." 

"  But  how  can  he  ?  Doesn't  he  get  into  trou- 
ble? " 

"  Maybe,"  said  Jack  cheerfully.  "  He  has  to 
pass  the  time  somehow,  you  know.  I've  only 
had  him  since  the  beginning  of  this  semester  — 
he  doesn't  teach  freshmen.  There's  a  regular 
Maxwell  cult  here.  Their  creed  is:  I  believe  in 
the  Devil,  destroyer  of  heaven  and  earth,  and  in 
Donald  Maxwell,  his  you-be-damned  —  "  he 
145 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

broke  off  with  a  laugh  — "I  guess  that's  enough, 
Lady.  You'll  think  Waverley  an  awful  place. 
Don't  worry." 

But  she  looked  at  him  anxiously.  There 
seemed  to  be  more  things  in  college  education 
than  she  had  dreamed  of. 

But,  later  in  the  day,  she  forgot  her  fears, 
and  shouted  with  the  rest  of  the  mob,  and  was 
cheerfully  almost  suffocated  when  Jack  clutched 
her  in  an  unconscious  embrace  during  a  moment 
of  breathless  suspense;  she  exulted  in  the  bar- 
baric cries :  "  Tear  'em  up !  Rah !  Rah !  Rah ! 
—  Weeks  !  Weeks !  Weeks  !  "  and  the  next  mo- 
ment her  feet  were  keeping  time  to  the  fierce 
rhythm  of  a  song  which  rose  to  the  open  sky 
with  the  ma j  estic  sweep  of  a  Credo :  Hurrah  for 
the  Yellow  and  the  Blue. 

She  laughed  until  she  nearly  cried  at  the  stu- 
dent behind  her  who  had  the  voice  of  a  bron- 
chitic  rooster,  and  who  persistently  crowed  in  her 
ear  with  an  inimitably  malicious  accent: 
"  Who's  got  the  goods  ?  —  Waverley's  got  the 
goods,  Chicago,  Chicago,  Chicago !  " —  the  in- 
flexion rendering  the  cry  a  unique  example  of 
what  may  be  accomplished  with  a  simple  jeer. 

But  she  turned  her  head  away  and  moaned 
146 


when  some  hero  lay  prostrate  —  murdered  —  it 
was  j  ust  that !  —  it  was  a  game  for  brutes !  It 
was  brutes  too,  who  revived  him  with  buckets  of 
cold  water  —  she  could  never  have  believed  that 
men  could  be  so  cruel.  No  one  should  ever 
bring  her  to  see  another  game. 

And  then  she  stood  on  her  toes  and  shouted 
with  the  rest  when  the  damaged  champion  limped 
back  to  his  post. . 

She  watched  the  coach  with  a  fascinated  eye 
—  he  had  a  strange  way  of  squatting  on  his 
heels  and  chewing  at  his  cigar,  while  his  hat  went 
steadily  further  back  on  his  head.  She  had 
heard  a  great  deal  about  his  smile  —  when  the 
local  papers  ran  short  of  news  they  filled  in  with 
a  caricature  of  it  —  and  she  studied  it  atten- 
tively, wondering  what  use  he  made  of  it  in  pri- 
vate life.  It  was  a  mask  which  doubtless  am- 
bushed a  real  man,  but  it  appeared  to  have 
become  a  habit. 

A  freight-train  went  crunching  by  on  drag- 
ging wheels,  the  engine-driver  and  his  mates 
hanging  from  it  as  greedy  for  the  spectacle  as 
the  lesser  urchin  wedging  his  eye  through  a  knot- 
hole in  the  fence.  It  left  behind  it  a  black  trail 
of  smoke  with  which  the  light  wind  played,  chas- 
ing it  higher  and  higher,  until  it  was  lost  be- 
147 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

yond  the  hills  where  the  shadows  were  growing 
purple  against  the  coming  of  the  sunset. 

"  What  a  sky !  "  exclaimed  Richarda  suddenly. 

"  Yes.  Isn't  the  whole  thing  an  anomalous 
setting  for  this  ?  "  Jack  waved  a  hand  which 
took  in  the  lovely  bit  of  country  which  lay  just 
outside  that  mob-encircling  fence.  Then  he 
shouted :  "  Rah !  Rah !  Rah !  " 

It  was  indeed.  The  hoarse  cries,  the  deliri- 
ous outbursts  of  the  band,  the  "  locomotive  " 
yell,  the  surge  to  their  feet  of  the  thousands  of 
human  beings  on  the  grand-stand  and  the 
bleachers  —  a  movement  so  instantaneous  as  to 
seem  the  expression  of  a  single  will ;  the  frenzied 
fluttering  of  blue  and  yellow  and  red  and  white 
banners ;  the  braying  of  tin  horns ;  the  wide- 
spread tumult  of  Waverley  gathered  into  a 
mighty  roar,  of  which  the  weak  but  heroic 
"  rooting  "  of  the  under-dogs  sounded  like  faint- 
est echo  —  there  was  indeed  a  wide  discrepancy 
between  scene  and  setting. 

But  Richarda  too,  forgot  all  about  the  glory 
of  the  autumn  day.  She  hung,  one  in  soul  with 
the  multitude,  upon  the  white,  nerve-steeled  face 
of  Waverley's  idolised  captain,  little  Weeks  — 
his  head  thrown  far  back,  his  wild  eyes  seeming 
to  wrest  the  goal  from  the  skies  —  and  then,  the 
148 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

signals,  sharp  as  if  snapped  from  a  gun,  and 
after  that  —  ! 

"  They'll  be  killed  —  I  know  they  will,"  she 
wailed. 

But  she  was  shouting  again  before  she  had 
finished  thinking  that ;  she  did  not  understand 
why  she  shouted  —  she  only  knew  that  she  must. 
Everyone  was  shouting,  and  the  band  was  play- 
ing as  if  it  were  drunk :  "  There'll  be  a  Hot 
Time  in  the  Old  Town  To-night,"  while  the  men 
who  a  moment  ago  had  looked  as  if  they  were 
being  ground  in  a  merciless  machine,  were  run- 
ning off  the  field  with  the  unconcerned  air  of 
those  who  know  themselves  numbered  among  the 
great. 

Two  minutes  later  she  was  wedged  in  the  midst 
of  the  mass  which  oozed  as  one  substance  through 
the  gate ;  everyone  was  talking. 

"  Greatest  punt  ever  seen  on  earth,  Hom- 
frey ! "  said  a  man  who  had  upon  him  the  well- 
worn  stamp  of  the  professor. 

"  You  bet !  "-  exclaimed  Jack.  "  And  there's 
Kearney  crying  like  a  child  because  it's  his  last 
game,  but  I  tell  you  —  I  told  him  just  now,  it's 
something  to  leave  college  with  the  record  of  a 
punt  like  that  behind  you." 

"  Good  enough ! "  said  the  professor,  sol- 
emnly. 

149 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

Richarda  smiled.  But  her  smile  was  benevo- 
lent; she  had  had  her  own  attack  of  frenzied 
foot-ball. 

But  by  the  time  Jack  returned  to  the  hotel,  to 
take  her  to  the  fraternity  house,  she  was  feeling 
somewhat  grave.  She  was  ashamed  to  remember 
how  absurdly  excited  she  had  been  over  that 
game.  What  could  you  expect  of  boys  and 
girls  if  a  woman  of  her  age  had  so  little  bal- 
ance?—  she  wondered  what  safe-guards  there 
were  here  to  protect  them  against  the  too  easy 
enthusiasms  and  emotions  of  youth.  Nothing 
—  not  even  a  stile  to  climb  so  far  as  she  had 
seen. 

The  fraternity  house  charmed  her  —  the 
quaint,  many-gabled,  wide-fronted  building  set 
back  against  the  woods  which  were  the  pride  of 
the  little  town. 

"  Oh,  what  a  place!  Don't  you  love  it?" 
she  asked  impulsively  of  the  first  man  who  was 
introduced  to  her. 

"  Guess  we  do,"  he  answered  simply,  but  in  a 
tone  that  she  understood. 

The  big  room  was  full  of  fellows;  Jack 
brought  them  up  to  her  one  after  the  other,  and 
they  bravely  essayed  the  part  of  host  with  vary- 
ing degrees  of  ease.  She  talked  engineering  to 
150 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

one  —  Professor  Maxwell  to  another  —  sympa- 
thised with  a  third  over  the  lamentable  ignorance 
of  the  men  in  the  English  department  —  dis- 
cussed arboriculture  with  a  forestry  enthusiast, 
and  the  best  method  of  developing  the  beet  sugar 
industry  with  a  youthful  expert  in  chemistry. 
When  she  found  herself  listening  as  if  her  life 
depended  upon  it  to  an  appallingly  technical 
exposition  of  the  latest  developments  of  electrical 
science,  she  was  tempted  to  wonder  whether  all 
these  nice  boys  saw  what  a  fool  she  was  making 
of  herself  when  she  answered:  "Yes,  I  see. 
Why,  of  course."  For  she  saw  nothing.  But, 
thank  heaven !  they  took  themselves  seriously 
and  her  too,  and  she  concluded  that  she  must  be 
conducting  herself  with  all  the  appearance  of 
intelligence  that  was  necessary,  when  she  over- 
heard the  engineer  whisper  to  the  forester: 
"  Isn't  she  a  peach  !  " 

She  could  have  purred  with  content;  she  was 
so  anxious  to  please  these  boys  for  Jack's 
sake. 

Several  girls,  who,  like  herself,  had  been  in- 
vited to  dinner,  were  introduced  to  her,  and  for 
the  moment  the  face  of  one  held  her,  but  then 
she  forgot  it ;  she  could  only  think  of  these 
boys  —  it  fascinated  her  to  watch  them,  and  to 
wonder  what  lay  behind  and  before. 
151 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

At  dinner  she  found  herself  next  to  a  big, 
broad-shouldered  law  student,  who  was  taking 
a  post-graduate  course  and  who  had  been  right 
end  on  the  first  great  foot-ball  team  that  Wav- 
erley  had  put  in  the  field.  At  first  he  could  say 
very  little  to  her,  as  it  was  his  duty  to  carve,  so 
she  contented  herself  with  admiring  the  fine 
square-cut  head,  the  straight  blue  eyes,  the  pa- 
tient lips,  and  the  strong  chin.  The  hands,  too 

—  they  were  so  sure,  yet  instinctively,  she  felt 
that  they  would   be  tender  with   frail  things. 
This    man    was    clearly    of   no    common    grain. 
Generations   of   righteous   living   and   thinking 
must  have   gone  to  the  making  of  so  highly 
graded  a  human  product. 

Hutchinson  turned  to  her  at  last  with  a  slow 
smile.  "  Have  you  met  my  pal,  Mr.  McGilli- 
vray?  "  he  asked.  "  He's  down  there,  the  third 
from  the  end.  Yes,  if  you  have,  you  know  that 
he's  daft  about  Robert  Burns.  Funny,  isn't  it? 

—  what    curious    hobbies    the    sanest   men    get. 
He's  prowled  all  about  Scotland,  making  tracks 
in  Robert's  foot-prints  —  worked  his  way  over 
in  a  cattle-ship  to  do  it.     He's  a  law  too.     You 
don't  expect  that  sort  to  be  sentimental  about 
anything,  do  you?  " 

Richarda   had  perceived   at  once,  that,   like 
152 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

Dawson,  Hutchinson  was  a  monologist ;  but  she 
could  not  let  this  pass.  "  I  expect  any  sort  of 
man  whatever  to  be  sentimental,"  she  flashed  at 
him. 

"  Oh,  do  you  now  ?  " —  the  slow  smile  broke 
delightfully  over  his  face.  "  But  take  me. 
There  isn't  a  trace  of  sentiment  about  me  — 
honest !  But  most  of  the  fellows  —  Oh  yes !  — 
get  them  around  the  fire-place  here  at  night, 
and  give  them  a  pipe  and  a  little  time  to  thaw, 
and  pretty  soon  they're  all  moaning  away  on 
the  all-absorbing  topic.  All  but  me.  I  just 
listen.  I  guess  it's  about  the  only  time  I  ever 
do  listen.  But  there's  never  anything  I  want  to 
say  about  some  things  in  a  crowd.  And  girls 
—  well,  there's  Betty  Carter — "  Richarda  fol- 
lowed his  eyes  down  the  table,  and  saw,  next  to 
Jack,  the  girl  whose  face  had  made  upon  her 
an  impression  that  was  instantly  renewed  — 
"  Half  the  fellows  here  are  crazy  over  her,  and 
the  rest  aren't,  only  because  they  have  been. 
All  but  me.  Betty  only  amuses  me." 

"  She's  very  popular,  then,"  said  Richarda 
slowly;  she  was  looking  at  the  girl  again. 

"  Popular !  —  she's    a    regular    mowing-ma- 
chine.    It's  funny  —  what  a  fool  the  most  sen- 
sible fellow  will  make  of  himself  over  Betty." 
153 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

The  girl  was  talking  to  Jack  with  the  demure- 
ness  of  a  nun,  but  she  was  a  blaze  of  seductive 
colour  —  there  was  no  conventual  chill  upon  her 
lips  or  in  her  eyes.  Her  thick  brown  hair  grew 
low  upon  a  forehead  which  was  as  calm  as  a 
Madonna's ;  it  was  wonderful  hair  —  the  sort  of 
which  a  boy  dreams. 

"  I  don't  think  I  like  her,"  said  Richarda, 

Hutchinson  laughed.  "  Do  you  always  ex- 
press your  opinions  as  frankly  as  that?  " 

"  I  never  do.  But  you're  a  lawyer.  You 
won't  tell." 

He  laughed  again,  and  then  talked  on  in  his 
quiet,  unhurried  way,  discussing  a  variety  of 
subjects  with  the  sureness  of  judgment  which 
impressed  her  as  an  inheritance  from  a  long  line 
of  just  men.  When  the  boys  sang,  he  was  si- 
lent ;  she  looked  at  him,  and  saw  that  his  mouth 
was  the  firmly  set  kind  that  never  sings.  A 
hymn  tune  ? —  yes,  he  might  grind  through  that, 
safely  anchored  to  one  note,  but  these  gay, 
swinging  songs  were  not  for  him. 

"  I'm  fond  of  music,"  he  said  simply.  "  But 
though  I  hear  those  songs  every  day,  I  never  am 
quite  sure  which  is  which.  Queer"  isn't  it? 
They  tell  me  I  can't  sing,  and  just  look  at 
Hefty !  He's  a  regular  music-box." 
154 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

"  Why  do  you  call  him  «  Hefty?  '  " 

"  Because  he's  so  light-minded." 

"  Light-minded?  " 

"  That's  not  a  criticism,"  he  said  quickly. 
"  We're  very  proud  of  Hefty." 

"Why?" 

He  laughed.     "  Aren't  you?  " 

"  That's  different." 

"  No,  it's  just  the  same.  You  adore  Hefty 
because  you  can't  help  it.  You  feel  sort  of 
tender  over  Hefty,  as  you  would  over  a  child. 
He's  such  a  beautiful  thing." 

"  Go  on,  please,"  said  Richarda.  "  It's  so 
interesting  to  me  to  hear  what  someone  else 
thinks  of  Jack." 

"  He's  the  most  perfect  specimen  of  human 
bric-a-brac  I've  ever  come  across.  He's  purely 
ornamental.  I  often  tell  him  so.  Oh,  that's  all 
right,  you  know."  Hutchinson  looked  at  her 
anxiously.  "  Some  people  have  to  be  that 
sort." 

Richarda  laughed.  "  You  seem  to  have 
thought  a  great  deal  about  him." 

"  You  can't  help  thinking  about  him.  He's 
always  the  centre  of  the  picture.  Look  at  him 
now !  He's  posing  —  he  always  is." 

"Jack?" 

155 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

"  But  he  doesn't  pose  to  deceive  you,  or  to 
please  you.  He  poses  because  it  fascinates 
him." 

Richarda  laughed.  "  You're  interesting  me. 
And  you've  fooled  me,  which  is  something 
I'm  always  grateful  for.  I  had  no  idea  you 
were  as  dangerous  an  analyst  as  you  seem  to 
be." 

"  I  knew  you  hadn't,  and  I  thought  it  my 
duty  to  undeceive  you.  I'm  painfully  honest. 
At  least,  Hefty  says  so.  Perhaps  I  ought  to 
add,  that  if  you  want  to  know  what  I  really 
think  of  Hefty,  he  can  tell  you.  He  knows." 

There  was  an  instantaneous  stir;  everyone 
rose,  and  led  by  Jack  the  boys  sang  their  Fra- 
ternity Song.  Richarda  was  thrilled  —  the 
voices  were  young  and  fresh,  but  the  faces  were 
so  serious.  Until  this  moment  the  fraternity 
idea  had  impressed  her  as  a  sort  of  game  at  good- 
fellowship;  she  began  to  understand  the  signifi- 
cance of  the  bond  to  these  enthusiastic  souls  as 
she  listened  to  this  song  sung  with  such  dirge- 
like  solemnity. 

She  looked  at  one  face  after  the  other  —  to- 
day boys,  to-morrow  men.  What  lay  before 
them  in  the  future  of  which  they  sang?  Which 
was  to  know  happiness  ?  —  which,  sorrow  ?  Pov- 
156 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

erty,  riches  —  success,  failure  —  honour,  dis- 
grace —  to  each  was  allotted  his  portion. 

Ah !  —  she  would  have  liked  to  reach  out  her 
hand  and  stay  this  ark  of  safety.  For  the 
world,  towards  which  their  eager  eyes  were  set, 
was  like  a  great  mill  full  of  strange  machinery, 
and  from  it  they  would  one  day  be  cast  out,  each 
with  his  own  scar. 

The  last  note  died  away  —  there  was  a  mo- 
ment of  silence;  then  a  girl's  soft  laugh,  fol- 
lowed by  a  general  outbreak  of  talking  and  a 
movement  of  scattering  groups  towards  the  big 
room,  where  huge  logs  were  blazing  on  a  deep 
hearth ;  for  it  was  November,  and  the  evening  air 
was  chill. 

Richarda  sat  down  in  the  ingle-nook.  "  Run 
away,"  she  said  gaily  to  Hutchinson,  "  And  play 
with  the  girls.  I  mean  it.  I  want  just  to  look 
at  the  whole  thing,  please.  At  you,  too." 

"  I'd  rather  stay,"  he  said. 

But  she  smiled  at  him,  and  he  went. 

And  she  sat  there,  so  glad  to  be  alone;  she 
wanted  to  think,  here  with  these  boys  and  girls 
before  her.  They  must  go  out  into  life  —  they 
must  prove  themselves  in  it.  The  blind  inexperi- 
ence and  innocence  of  youth  was  not  worthy  to 
be  ranked  with  the  knowledge  that  knew  itself 
157 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

at  any  cost  to  be  the  truth.  She  wished  she 
could  tell  them  not  to  be  afraid  of  the  problems 
that  might  come  to  them  —  nor  of  the  sorrows ; 
life  was  so  simple  when  one  was  unafraid. 

She  sat  there,  so  still,  her  thoughts  circling 
far,  but  they  came  home,  at  last,  as  they  always 
did,  to  Homfrey.  And  a  strange  joy  of  living 
overflowed  her  heart;  in  the  midst  of  this  gay 
chatter  and  laughter  she  dreamed  that  she  was 
alone  with  the  man  she  loved  —  it  was  a  supreme 
moment,  for  at  last  he  knew,  and  she  was  no 
longer  afraid. 

And  just  then,  from  away  across  the  room,  the 
face  of  Betty  Carter  smote  sharp  across  her 
vision  of  joy;  the  girl  was  looking  at  Jack; 
there  was  something  in  her  face  that  Richarda 
had  never  seen  in  the  face  of  a  girl  before.  She 
shivered,  but  without  understanding. 

And  then  she  smiled.  For  Jack  crossed  the 
room,  and  sat  down  beside  her. 


158 


CHAPTER  X 

Richarda  read  and  re-read  the  telegram: 
Meet  me  on  the  nine-thirty  to-night.  —  Hattie 
Lewin. 

"  Why,  she  must  be  on  her  way  through  to 
San  Francisco,"  she  said  to  Homf rey.  "  And 
that's  certainly  a  complete  change  in  her  plans, 
for  in  her  last  letter  to  me,  she  said  she  was 
going  to  Florida  with  the  Mayos.  Perhaps  Mr. 
Lewin  is  ill.  She  said  he  seemed  to  have  lost  his 
grip  ever  since  she  refused  to  let  him  go  abroad 
with  her  last  year." 

"  That  woman  is  an  unplucked  brand,"'  said 
Homfrey.  "  I'd  like  to  be  Tommy's  domestic 
adviser  for  a  while.  He  needs  more  law  than 
gospel  to  manage  her." 

When  the  nine-thirty  train  pulled  in  at  the 
Central  Depot  some  hours  later,  the  Homfreys 
were  there  to  met  it ;  they  waited  at  the  gate  until 
the  throng  had  thinned  to  a  straggling  few,  and 
then  feeling  somewhat  anxious  as  Mrs.  Lewin  did 
not  appear,  they  walked  toward  the  end  of  the 
159 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

train,  and  found  her  hanging  from  the  steps  of 
her  car,  eagerly  looking  for  them. 

"  But  Hattie,  you're  coming  home  with  us  ?  " 
asked  Richarda. 

"  My  dear,  no!  I'm  just  tearing  through  to 
Tommy.  Haven't  you  heard?  Mr.  Homfrey, 
you  know." 

Homfrey 's  look  answered  for  him. 

"  Why,  Tommy's  failed.  Hasn't  got  a  sou 
left.  Went  under  in  the  general  crash.  That's 
all." 

"  But  you  —  Why  Hattie,  I  didn't  suppose 
— "  Richarda  paused;  she  had  spoken  impul- 
sively, i 

"  You  didn't  suppose,  did  you,  that  I  would 
leave  Tommy  Lewin  alone  at  a  moment  like 
this?" 

"  I  don't  know." 

"  H'm !  Poor  Tommy  !  Why,  this  will  about 
kill  him,  Charda.  He's  the  soul  of  honour,  you 
see,  though  he's  the  shrewdest  man  alive.  But 
if  he  once  gets  thinking  that  he's  no  good,  he'll 
be  no  good.  Nobody  has  any  confidence  in  a 
man  that  hasn't  any  in  himself,  and  I'm  afraid 
Tommy  won't  have  any  now.  It's  an  awful 
shake-up  to  a  man  to  fail." 

"  And  you're  really  going  to  him,"  said  Ri- 
charda ;  she  was  still  bewildered. 
160 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

Mrs.  Lewin  laughed.  "  Bless  your  heart,  yes  ! 
Why  shouldn't  I  ?  Poor  Tommy !  —  I  suppose 
he  thinks  of  me  now  as  probably  the  most  merci- 
less of  his  creditors.  But  I've  got  things  fixed. 
You  see,  Lilla  came  home  engaged  to  an  Eng- 
lishman —  sort  of  man  who  had  never  realised 
before  he  saw  me,  what  a  woman  might  be  — 
four  sisters  of  his  own,  too  —  skirts  up  in  front 
and  down  behind  —  you  know  the  kind  of  Eng- 
lishwoman I  mean.  Thank  Heaven,  Lilla 's  the 
last  of  the  girls,  and  yesterday  I  sold  Deerfield 
to  Sam  Charlton  —  that's  Bessie's  husband,  and 
father's  to  go  on  living  there  just  the  same  — 
Sam  has  scads  of  money  and  paid  me  a  good 
round  figure  for  the  place.  So  now,  you  see, 
my  family  is  off  my  hands,  and  I've  got  money 
enough  to  give  Tommy  a  fighting  chance." 

"  Hattie,  what  an  extraordinary  woman  you 
are!" 

"  Oh,  I  don't  know."  Mrs.  Lewin  was  silent  a 
moment  —  then  in  a  sudden  burst,  she  said :  "  Oh 
Richarda,  I've  always  had  such  a  mean  time. 
We  were  so  awfully  poor,  and  not  poor-people. 
I  used  to  envy  our  washer-woman.  You  see,  it's 
much  easier  to  lose  your  money  bang  the  way 
Tommy  has,  in  a  big  crash,  and  lots  of  other 
fellows  going  down  with  you,  than  to  lose  it, 
161 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

inch  by  inch  the  way  Father  did  and  through 
one  error  of  judgment  after  another.  Mother 
dare  not  let  people  know  how  poor  we  were,  for 
fear  of  injuring  Father's  credit.  When  she 
died  she  seemed  to  think  I'd  manage  some  way. 
But  I  watched  those  girls  growing  up,  in  terror. 
There  was  positively  nothing  for  me  to  do  ex- 
cept marry  some  man  who  could  pay  the  bills 
until  I  got  them  settled.  My  dear,  I  hope 
they'll  never  find  out  that  their  husbands  have 
always  fallen  in  love  with  me  first  —  I  had  to 
manage  it  that  way,  and  then  tactfully  transfer 
my  admirer's  affections  to  the  sister  I  designed 
him  for.  It's  thankless  work,  and  there  never 
was  a  woman  yet  who  was  grateful  to  another 
woman  for  getting  her  a  husband.  If  you're 
wise,  you'll  everlastingly  deny  afterwards  that 
you  had  a  thing  to  do  with  it." 

"  What  a  clever  woman  you  are,  Hattie !  I 
wonder  if  there's  any  emergency  that  you 
couldn't  manage  somehow." 

"  Perhaps  not.  But  I've  been  dealing  with 
emergencies  all  my  life.  You  haven't.  Every- 
thing has  been  smooth  for  yon.  Dull,  I  should 
call  it."  Mrs.  Lewin  threw  a  saucy  glance  at 
Homfrey.  "  You've  always  had  a  man  at  your 
back.  But  I've  had  to  be  the  man.  That  suits 
162 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

me  all  right,  though  —  I'm  not  complaining, 
and  just  now  I've  got  something  to  do  that's 
worth  doing.  For  I  don't  believe  for  one  mo- 
ment, that  without  his  mother  and  without  me, 
Tommy  Lewin  would  ever  get  on  his  feet  again. 
Mind  you,  that  old  mother  of  his  was  a  great 
character.  I've  heard  Tommy  say  she  made  his 
father.  You  know,  I'd  been  having  the  blues 
awfully  just  before  I  got  this  news  about 
Tommy.  The  only  living  thing  I  had  any  in- 
terest in  was  my  clothes,  and  I  didn't  see  that 
that  was  going  to  keep  a  woman  like  me  content. 
I  almost  wished  I  had  the  girls  all  to  marry  off 
over  again.  There,  we're  off,  and  I  haven't  let 
you  say  a  word.  But  I  couldn't,  Charda.  I 
wanted  you  to  understand." 

"  What  a  woman !  "  exclaimed  Richarda  as 
they  walked  away.  "  Who  could  have  believed 
that  she  could  turn  around  like  this !  " 

"  Oh,  she's  a  remarkable  woman,"  said  Hom- 
f rev  drily  —  so  drily  in  fact  that  Richarda  said 
nothing  further  to  him  about  Mrs.  Lewin  until 
some  evenings  later  when  he  was  comfortably 
settled  with  a  cigar,  and  had  finished  undis- 
turbed his  perusal  of  the  evening  paper. 

"  Hattie    will    have    reached    San    Francisco 
to-day,"  she  said  musingly.     "  I  wonder  what 
Mr.  Lewin  thinks  of  her  now. 
163 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

"  She's  only  doing  what  any  decent  wife  ought 
to  do." 

Richarda  laughed.  "  But  you  see,  Tim,  she 
isn't  a  decent  wife.  All  the  same,  she's  worth 
two  of  most  wives  —  the  sort  you  would  prob- 
ably call  decent." 

"  She  isn't,"  said  Homfrey  calmly.  "  She's 
a  wilful,  selfish,  highly  capable  woman.  Mind 
you,  I'm  not  saying  that,  under  all  the  circum- 
stances, she's  not  the  best  wife  for  Lewin  to  have. 
But  as  a  woman  ?  —  No  thanks  !  She's  self-as- 
serting and  irritating.  She  should  have  been  a 
man." 

"  Oh,  that  sort  of  woman  you're  thinking  of 
is  the  same  old  sort  men  always  think  they  ad- 
mire. And  that  sort  would  just  have  been 
crushed  by  this  disaster,  and  would  only  be  an 
awful  burden  to  Tommy  Lewin." 

"  Oh,  I  grant  you  —  it'll  be  Lewin  &  Co.  all 
right,  with  the  tail  wagging  the  dog.  She's  a 
remarkable  woman  —  I  admit  it.  But  all  the 
same,  I  would  rather  have  your  little  finger  — " 
he  broke  off,  and  they  both  laughed. 

"  Dear,  you're  very  sweet,"  said  Richarda 
lightly  —  very  lightly,  for  such  tribute  from 
Homfrey  was  rare. 

They  were  so  little  given  to  demonstration; 
164 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

had  either  required  that  of  the  other,  it  might 
have  proved  a  menace  to  happiness.  Homfrey's 
critical  taste  would  have  rendered  him  intolerant 
of  the  frequent  emphasis  of  emotion  in  the  most 
emotional  of  human  relationships ;  the  woman 
who  was  his  wife  had  had  the  performing  of  no 
easy  task  in  the  binding  to  herself  of  this  man  at 
once  so  passionate  and  so  critical  of  passion. 
But  she  had  learnt,  by  what  divine  magic  her 
darkest  hours  alone  knew,  how  to  hold  a  man  of 
a  temperament  which  but  for  her,  might  never 
have  found  haven.  Yet  even  now,  after  long 
years,  there  came  upon  her  occasionally  times  of 
wild  outburst,  when  the  smothered  ache  refused 
to  be  stilled  —  when  the  illusive  ideals  of  her 
girlhood  cried  aloud  for  revenge  upon  the  double 
meanings  of  life. 

So  she  laughed  lightly  when  Homfrey  kissed 
the  tip  of  her  finger  —  the  finger  for  which  he 
professed  such  devotion  —  and  then  she  sat  still, 
looking  at  him,  thinking  about  him  intently. 
And  she  began  again  asking  herself  the  question 
she  had  asked  a  thousand  times :  What  high  pur- 
pose in  the  making  of  this  man  would  have  been 
served  by  the  revelation  to  him  of  his  dishonour? 
—  she  had  never  felt  herself  able  to  judge  what 
the  effect  of  it  would  have  been.  But  one  thing 
165 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

she  did  know,  and  that  was,  that  admission 
between  them  of  the  relation  of  Jack  to  himself, 
would  have  destroyed  all  possibility  of  that  high 
conception  of  marriage  which  to-day  governed 
the  nature  of  their  affection  for  each  other.  To 
be  aware  that  he,  looking  at  her,  understood  that 
she  had  lost  her  first  innocent  faith  in  the  man 
to  whom  she  had  surrendered,  and  must  still  sur- 
render herself,  would  have  been  the  utmost  agony 
of  degradation  to  her  —  far  crueller  than  any- 
thing she  had  suffered  as  it  was.  For  in  mar- 
riage he  had  become  to  her  a  new  creature  —  the 
man  dignified  and  exalted  by  the  mystery  of  that 
oneness  through  which  his  life  became  more  hers 
than  her  own. 

Thus  had  she  idealised  the  bond  by  which  the 
flesh  of  man  and  woman  is  held  captive,  and  to- 
day she  believed  that  he  was  what  he  was  be- 
cause she  had  saved  him  from  realising  what  he 
had  been. 

"  That  boy  Dick's  a  curious  chap,"  said  Hom- 
frey  suddenly.  "  I  haven't  got  the  key  to  his 
mind.  Sometimes  you'd  hardly  believe  he  was 
my  son.  It  irritates  me  — "  he  paused  — "  We 
don't  seem  to  touch  at  any  point.  There's  no 
elasticity  in  his  mental  make-up  —  he  sees 
things  his  way  and  no  other.  Oh,  that's  always 
166 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

a  powerful  stand  to  take,  and  I  fancy  he  is  go- 
ing to  have  the  force  to  make  it  go,  but  it  isn't 
my  stand,  and  I  never  can  comprehend  how  a 
man  reaches  it.  It's  a  curious  thing  — "  Hom- 
f rey  spoke  slowly  — "  but  positively,  if  I  liked 
him  —  which  I  need  hardly  say  I  don't  — 
there's  something  so  confoundedly  cocksure 
about  him  —  but  if  I  did  like  him  —  why,  that 
boy  Jack  of  yours  — " 

Richarda  looked  at  Homfrey. 

" —  Don't  you  see,  Charda,  it's  that  that 
makes  him  so  unendurable  to  me."  Homfrey 
had  never  talked  like  this  to  Richarda  before ; 
he  was  surprised  and  reassured  to  find  that  he 
could.  "  He  seems  to  have  a  passion  for  doing 
the  kind  of  things  I  would  do,  just  the  way  I 
would  do  them.  Haven't  you  ever  noticed 
that?" 

Richarda  picked  up  the  work  she  had 
dropped;  the  needle  blundered  in  her  fingers. 
"  I'm  sorry  about  Dick,"  she  said  tremulously. 
"  Perhaps  when  he's  older  — "  but  she  stopped ; 
the  effort  to  appear  calm  was  making  too  great 
demand  upon  her. 

"  Why,  my  darling ! "  exclaimed  Homfrey 
impulsively :  "  You  didn't  think  I  meant  to  be 
hard  on  Dick,  did  you?  Bless  your  heart! 
167 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

Dick's  my  boy,  and  he's  tremendous  stuff.  He's 
going  to  be  worth  two  of  his  father.  I'm  jeal- 
ous —  that's  what's  the  matter  with  me.  As 
for  the  other  chap — "  he  snapped  his  fingers 
contemptuously  — "  he's  as  adaptable  as  a  mon- 
key on  a  stick.  With  him  it's  a  matter  of  cheap 
imitation.  I  suppose  I  ought  to  feel  compli- 
mented by  his  choice  of  me  as  model,  but  after 
all,  I  should  like  to  feel  that  he  had  some  justifi- 
cation for  his  impudence." 

As  adaptable  as  a  monkey  on  a  stick! 

Richarda  sat  still,  but  something  cried  aloud 
in  her  as  it  had  never  cried  before,  that  she  must 
tell  Homfrey  the  truth  —  that  for  the  sake  of 
justice  —  Justice !  —  she  hated  the  word. 

Yes,  but  for  a  man  to  speak  so  of  his  own 
son?  She  must  tell  Homfrey  the  truth. 

But  the  moments  passed,  and  she  said  nothing. 
For  out  of  the  confusion  of  her  thoughts,  there 
arose  the  memory  of  that  first  time  after  her 
great  awakening  to  the  truth  about  Homfrey 
— -  that  first  time  when  to  her  horror,  she  had  felt 
again  stirring  in  herself  that  longing  for  his 
touch,  for  the  murmured  tenderness  of  his  pas- 
sion—  that  strange  weakness  which  proclaimed 
her,  against  her  will,  his.  And  innocent  —  ap- 
palled and  outraged  by  this  revelation  of  mys- 
168 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

teries  within  her  nature  to  which  she  had  no 
clue,  she  had  declared  war  upon  herself. 

It  was  long  before  she  understood  that  sim- 
ple uncomprehended  impulse,  behind  which 
the  tragic  forces  of  marriage  were  intrenched. 
And  she  did  not  understand  now  .why  the  mem- 
ory of  that  exquisitely  cruel  moment  held  her 
silent. 

She  began  to  think  about  Dick ;  she  did  not 
admit  that  this  was  to  save  her  from  thinking 
of  the  other  boy.  Dick  presented  himself  to  her 
as  one  of  those  contradictions  of  heredity  which 
set  at  nought  all  certainty  of  deduction.  A 
saner,  serener  human  being  than  young  Richard 
Homfrey  would  have  been  difficult  of  discovery ; 
he  knew  no  moods;  his  days  moved  on  in  the 
grooves  allotted  to  them,  with  never  a  sound  of 
the  grinding  of  temperamental  wheels.  For 
years  Richarda  had  waited  for  some  revelation 
in  his  character  of  that  storm  in  herself  upon 
which  he  had  been  nourished,  but  there  had  been 
as  yet  no  evidences  of  it,  and  she  felt  herself 
impelled  to  believe  that  Nature,  ever  seeking  to 
express  herself  in  perfect  forms,  had  high  pow- 
ers in  the  protecting  of  that  mystery  of  promise 
destined  to  be  a  little  child.  Good  was  forever 
triumphing  over  evil ;  the  meanest  mother  trans- 
169 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

mitted  to  her  child  qualities  that  made  for  the 
eternal  triumph  of  righteousness. 

And  this  theory  accounted  not  only  for  her 
own  boy,  but  for  Jack  —  Jack  with  his  gentle- 
manly grace  and  easy  goodness  of  character. 

Adaptable  as  a  monkey  on  a  stick  —  her  face 
flamed  —  it  was  cruel. 

"  Tim ! " 

Homf rey  turned  in  his  chair.  "  Well  ?  "  he 
said  smiling. 

"  Ah,  I  can't." 

He  hardly  caught  the  words. 

"Come  —  what  is  it?" 

"  No  —  no." 

For  a  moment  he  looked  at  her,  amused,  try- 
ing to  fathom  the  strange  look  she  had  given 
him,  then  he  turned  back  to  his  book ;  it  was  use- 
less —  her  moods  took  their  rise  in  so  many 
sources  unknown  to  him. 

Richarda  had  spent  years  in  perfecting  the 
argument  upon  which  she  had  based  her  married 
life.  But  there  was  a  flaw  in  it.  She  knew 
that ;  she  realised  that  she  had  protected  her 
husband  at  the  expense  of  Jack,  but  that  was 
unavoidable. 

It  had  become  a  horror  to  her  to  see  them  to- 
gether; when  there  was  a  question  upon  which 
170 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

in  general  terms  they  had  to  admit  themselves 
in  accord,  it  seemed  as  if  they  could  not  rest 
until  they  fastened  upon  some  detail  about  which 
they  could  disagree. 

From  time  immemorial  the  world  had  made 
sport  of  the  antagonisms  of  women  —  it  seemed 
to  her  that  the  antagonisms  between  men  ex- 
pressed themselves  in  far  pettier,  meaner  man- 
ner; they  dealt  each  other  stealthy  blow,  and 
their  wounds  left  not  only  sting  but  scar. 

She  wondered  whether  a  mother  and  daughter 
could  have  escaped  knowledge  of  each  other  as 
did  this  father  and  son. 

Of  late  it  had  sometimes  occurred  to  her  that 
she  was  only  now  beginning  to  realise  what  a 
task  she  had  undertaken  when  she  assumed  si- 
lence as  to  the  relation  of  these  two.  Jack  as  a 
child  had  been  one  thing  —  a  comparatively 
negligible  factor  in  the  problem  —  Jack  as  a 
man  was  an  entirely  different  affair.  During 
all  these  years  she  had  held  the  elements  of  this 
situation  controlled  in  the  hollow  of  her  will; 
she  began  to  fear  a  future  harassed  by  incalcu- 
lable forces.  And  now  since  this  revealing  talk 
of  Homfrey's,  there  arose  in  her  a  determina- 
tion at  present  unconscious,  but  shortly  to  be- 
come actively  operative,  to  keep  this  father  and 
171 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

son  separate.  She  had  afforded  them  the  op- 
portunity of  propinquity,  and  nothing  in  either 
of  them  had  responded  to  it. 

So  she  argued,  because  she  knew  herself  afraid. 
For  in  her  soul  she  understood  that  as  it  was  with 
her  husband,  so  it  was  with  the  boy  —  in  spite 
of  his  apparently  instinctive  dislike  of  Homfrey, 
the  man  had  a  paradoxical  fascination  for  him. 
As  she  calculated  the  conditions,  she  realised  how 
dangerously  balanced  were  the  forces  of  attrac- 
tion and  repulsion  which  Homfrey  unconsciously 
exerted  upon  his  son.  She  remembered  moments 
when  the  boy's  soul  had  craved  in  his  eyes  for 
the  word  of  approval  he  never  got  —  the  word 
that  she  divined  would  mean  more  to  him  than 
all  that  she  had  ever  said. 

Thus  it  was  that  when  Richarda  at  last  fully 
understood  the  fact  of  this  mutual  attraction 
and  its  possible  perils  in  the  future,  her  attitude 
towards  the  situation  she  had  herself  created 
underwent  sudden  and  complete  change.  Her 
devotion  to  Jack  and  his  interests  remained,  but 
she  consciously  loosened  her  hold  upon  him;  she 
encouraged  him  to  feel  himself  part  of  that 
larger  world  of  knowledge  and  ambition  in 
which,  she  smilingly  assured  him,  she  had  no 
place.  She  urged  the  acceptance  of  various  in- 
172 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

vitations  for  his  successive  vacations  with  the 
apposite  suggestion  that  a  man's  college  friend- 
ships, if  wisely  made,  were  apt  to  prove  of  in- 
calculable value  and  resource  in  later  days. 

So  it  happened  that  in  the  most  treacherous 
period  of  his  development,  Jack  was  left  to  stand 
unsteadily  alone. 

Richarda  had  not  thought  of  that.  She  was 
sure  of  Jack ;  his  career  in  college  so  far  was 
starred  by  triumphs ;  she  herself  had  seen  enough 
to  know  that  he  was  the  idol  of  his  fraternity, 
and  who  was  as  critical  as  fellow  students?  He 
had  drawn  upon  himself  the  attention  of  Max- 
well, through  an  argument  in  the  class-room  in 
which  he  had  maintained  his  opinion  against  the 
professor's,  at  the  imminent  risk  of  being  sum- 
marily silenced. 

"  I  simply  had  to,  Lady,"  explained  Jack 
with  his  most  charming  air.  "  He  had  ignored 
me  as  long  as  I  could  stand  it.  You  have  to 
take  desperate  measures  with  that  man,  but  I 
reckoned  my  chances  to  a  word.  He  has  the 
most  impudent  way  of  suggesting  to  you  that 
he  has  no  use  whatever  for  your  brains,  and  the 
fellows  are  all  afraid  of  him,  and  he  knows  it. 
Well  — "  the  boy  laughed  happily  — "  he  knows 
now  that  I'm  not.  He's  a  gentleman  though. 
173 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

When  he  saw  that  I  did  not  mean  to  give  in  — 
that  he  could  not  scare  me  into  shutting  up  — 
that  I  had  an  argument  that  I  understood  — 
why  Lady,  then  he  talked  to  me  as  man  to  man." 
Jack  flushed  and  laughed  again. 

"  What  was  your  argument  about  ?  "  asked 
Richarda. 

"  Oh,  Maxwell  says  some  pretty  extreme 
things,  you  know.  It's  the  only  way  to  jog 
some  of  the  stupid  stuff  he  has  to  lecture  to  into 
thinking  at  all  —  he  has  to  shock  them  into  it." 

"  But  truth  — " 

"Truth? — "  Jack  laughed.  "Dear  Lady, 
who  knows  what  that  is  ?  " 

"  Is  that  how  that  man  Maxwell  talks  to 
you?" 

Jack  shrugged  his  shoulders.  "  Does  it  mat- 
ter how  he  talks,  when  you  never  know  what  he 
means  ?  " 

"  Well !  — "  the  word  came  with  indignant 
emphasis  — "I  think  he  ought  to  know  what  he 
means  if  he  undertakes  to  lecture  to  young  men 
who  need  to  know  what  can  be  believed." 

"  Lady  — "   Jack   was   suddenly    grave  — "  I 

heard  Maxwell  say  only  yesterday  that  the  world 

has  always  offered  big  premiums  to  the  men  who 

were  ready  to  swear  that  they  knew,  but  that  it 

174 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

owes  no  knowledge  worth  possessing  to  the  men 
who  have  bound  themselves,  by  a  creed  or  what 
not,  to  believe.  But  see!  you  musn't  worry 
about  things  like  that."  He  laid  her  hand 
against  his  cheek  in  his  old  boyish  fashion. 
"  The  trouble  with  me,  as  Maxwell  says,  is  that 
I  believe  too  easily.  He  says  that  I  have  the 
temperament  that  hungers  and  thirsts  after 
faith,  and  that  it  will  be  a  curse  to  me  yet. 
But  I  don't  know." 

She  was  still  troubled,  but  she  let  herself  be 
reassured  as  to  the  influences  that  surrounded 
him  —  he  looked  so  happy,  so  honest-eyed  — 
she  need  not  fear  for  him.  But  presently  she 
said: 

"  You  haven't  sent  me  a  poem  for  an  age." 

"  I  haven't  written  any." 

"Why?" 

"  Oh  Lady,  to  write  poems  a  man  must  first 
think  them. 

"  And  aren't  you  thinking  them?  " 

"  No." 

"Why?" 

He  hesitated.  "  I  don't  know.  The  stream 
just  seems  to  have  run  dry."  He  looked  dis- 
turbed. • 

"  Ah,  that  won't  do.  I  shan't  forgive  Pro- 
175 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

fessor  Maxwell  if  he  develops  the  philosopher  at 
the  expense  of  the  poet." 

"  Maxwell?  —  Oh,  he  has  nothing  to  do  with 
it." 

She  watched  him,  musing.  The  boy  was  be- 
coming a  man  of  a  character  and  destiny  prob- 
ably bound  for  depths  beyond  her  reach.  She 
must  have  confidence  in  him,  and  not  seek  to 
hamper  him  by  feminine  fear  of  every  new  ex- 
perience into  which  he  entered. 

Thus  she  eased  her  shoulders  of  their  burden, 
and  looking  out  upon  the  little  world  of  which 
she  had  constituted  herself  Providence,  she  saw 
that  it  was  good. 


176 


CHAPTER  XI 

There  had  been  a  time  when  Maxwell  had 
cherished  each  year  the  hope  that  his  new  class 
would  discover  to  him  some  intelligence  worth 
labouring  with.  He  knew  better  now.  Of  the 
thousands  of  students  who  had  passed  through 
his  hands,  only  three  had  displayed  minds  of 
superior  order.  The  mediocrity  of  the  human 
race  was  disconcerting,  and  it  was  clearly  the 
design  of  Nature  that  it  should  remain  medi- 
ocre ;  the  law  appeared  to  be  that  a  genius  in  the 
family  ensured  its  ultimate  extinction.  So  be  it ! 
Let  the  fool  live,  multiply  and  replenish  the 
earth.  Let  not  the  splendid  unintelligibility  of 
the  Universe  be  marred ! 

Therefore  Maxwell  had  flouted  the  thought, 
when  the  first  suspicion  of  Homfrey's  superiority 
to  his  fellows  entered  his  mind.  Yet  there 
came  a  morning  when  he  stopped  Jack  as  they, 
passed  on  the  campus.  "  I  read  that  thing  of 
yours  in  '  The  Bystander,'  "  he  said  carelessly, 
his  roving  eyes  betraying  no  immediate  interest 
in  the  eager  face  before  him.  "  Don't  get  think- 
177 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

ing  you're  a  star  because  you  can  rip  out  stuff 
like  that.  Just  keep  grinding  —  you  need  to." 
And  without  a  look  he  passed  on. 

But  Jack  knew  himself  marked. 

He  had  been  a  sophomore  then ;  now  he  was 
nearing  the  end  of  his  Junior  year,  and  the  uni- 
versity to  him  meant  Maxwell ;  to  Maxwell  that 
year  meant  Homfrey.  How  he  had  experi- 
mented with  the  pliant  mind  !  —  the  destruction 
of  all  that  the  boy  had  come  under  his  influence 
believing,  had  interested  him,  especially  as  he 
had  been  conscious  at  first  of  definite  resistance. 
He  had  smiled ;  Lord  help  him,  the  boy,  with  his 
innocent,  apron-string  theories  of  life! 

Maxwell  destroyed,  but  he  did  not  rebuild ; 
each  man  must  do  that  for  himself.  If  he  could 
not  —  but  there  Maxwell  shrugged  his  shoul- 
ders. 

And  while  the  work  went  on,  Richarda  was 
drawing  herself  further  and  further  from  Jack ; 
she  was  convincing  herself  with  the  most  plaus- 
ible arguments  that  he  no  longer  needed  her. 
She  had  heard  so  much  as  to  the  danger  years 
for  boys  —  fourteen,  fifteen,  sixteen  —  but  she 
had  seen  him  safe  through  those.  The  days  of 
the  apron  string  had  their  limit. 

So  Jack  stood  alone,  and  he  felt  himself  alone. 
178 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

He  realised  that  there  was  some  change  in  the 
woman  who  had  been  in  his  world  as  the  sun  in 
the  sky,  but  he  had  not  until  lately  supposed  a 
moment  possible  when  he  would  feel  himself 
actually  separated  from  her.  Yet  the  moment 
had  come. 

"  You're  getting  so  big  and  wise,"  she  said 
to  him  one  day  when  she  met  him  in  the  street  — 
he  had  run  into  town  with  Hutchinson  — "  You 
don't  need  me  any  more." 

"  Don't  I  ?  "  He  looked  at  her  with  an  ex- 
pression that  haunted  her  for  days.  But  she 
protected  herself  against  it. 

Thus  Jack  was  left,  unguarded,  to  the  minis- 
trations of  Maxwell,  and  his  avid  mind  soon 
made  its  own  the  brilliant  system  of  speciosity 
and  subterfuge  which  its  daring  manipulator 
presented  under  one  guise  to-day,  another  to- 
morrow. The  sum  and  substance  of  the  whole 
matter  was,  that  you  might  think  this,  or  you 
might  equally  well  think  that,  but  if  you 
thought  either  you  were  probably  a  fool  for 
your  pains.  "  At  least  that  is  my  opinion," 
Maxwell  would  say  politely  to  his  class,  "  but 
it  may  not  be  yours." 

Jack  was  at  first  stunned ;  nothing  was  left 
inviolate ;  Religion  and  Woman  were  the  two 
179 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

great  points  of  attack,  but  the  problem  of  Re- 
ligion was  more  easily  disposed  of  than  the 
problem  of  Woman.  In  time  the  boy  learnt 
strange  tricks  of  thought  from  a  man  who 
spoke  intimately  of  woman  as  man's  quarry, 
and  who  exposed  the  history  of  religion  with 
as  little  remorse  as  if  it  were  a  mere  matter  of 
Jack  and  the  Beanstalk. 

The  university  clock  was  striking  eight  as 
Douglas  Maxwell  heavily  climbed  the  creaking 
staircase  which  led  to  Room  B  on  the  sec- 
ond floor  of  the  oldest  building  on  the  campus. 
He  hung  his  drab  hat  on  a  peg  immediately  in- 
side the  class-room  door;  it  was  a  perennial 
joke  that  the  Senior  Class  intended  to  present 
him  with  a  new  head-covering,  but  it  is  a  ques- 
tion whether  they  could  have  borne  to  see  him 
in  a  hat  which  had  none  of  the  personal  char- 
acteristics of  this  old  slouched  bit  of  felt,  which 
seemed  to  proclaim,  even  from  its  peg,  that  it 
belonged  to  an  unconquered,  free-booting  spirit. 

Maxwell  swept  the  crowded  room  with  a 
glance,  and  stepped  to  the  platform  directly 
to  the  right  of  the  door.  Behind  him  stretched 
a  black-boarded  wall  scrawled  with  various  cabal- 
istic diagrams  —  here  and  there  a  name  was 
180 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

flung  —  Nietzsche,  Descartes;  a  word  —  geist- 
liche,  coparcenary;  perhaps  to  hasten  the  com- 
prehension of  the  halting  student.  He  laid  his 
books  down  on  the  small  table,  and  seating  him- 
self, scanned  his  notes  during  the  five  minutes' 
grace  allowed  to  the  belated.  Now  and  then  he 
looked  up,  with  the  expression  of  a  bull-dog 
rattling  his  heavy-hung  jaws  in  preparation 
for  conflict.  The  visitors  at  the  back  of  the 
room  —  the  women  visitors  —  felt  uncomforta- 
ble. Was  he  angry  because  they  were  there, 
or  was  he  merely  articulating  the  vertebras  of 
some  mighty  philosophical  proposition? 

In  reality  he  was  wondering  what  in  hell  his 
laundress  did  every  week  with  the  buttons  on 
his  most  intimate  garments.  It  was  one  of  the 
inexplicable  qualities  of  women  that  they  — 
but  he  was  on  his  feet,  the  last  moment  of  grace 
gone. 

"  Are  there  any  questions  ?  " 

The  students  were  silent ;  there  was  probably 
no  room  in  which  so  many  questions  were  asked 
as  in  this  one,  and  none  in  which  it  required  so 
much  courage  to  ask  them. 

"  No  questions  ?  "  Maxwell  looked  quizzically 
at  the  closely  gathered  group  of  women,  whom 
his  tone  seemed  to  spatter  with  sarcasm ;  he  de- 
181 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

spised  the  timidity  which  made  them  incapable 
of  stating  a  problem  for  discussion,  although  he 
knew  that  he  himself  was  responsible  for  their 
diffidence.  He  had  never  hesitated  to  declare  it 
his  intention  to  make  his  work  "  as  damned  un- 
pleasant for  the  women  "  as  he  could,  and  he 
had  succeeded  to  such  an  extent  that  their  num- 
bers dwindled  to  a  faint  but  philosophy-pursu- 
ing remnant,  which  he  harried  unceasingly  in 
the  hope  that  it  would  one  day  entirely  disap- 
pear, and  that  he  would  achieve  the  distinction 
in  an  institution  popularly  supposed  to  be 
strongly  co-educational,  of  lecturing  to  men 
only.  He  sneered  at  those  feeble  departments 
of  the  university  which  snatched  eagerly  at 
women  students  for  the  purpose  of  demonstrat- 
ing their  popularity  to  a  board  of  regents,  apt 
to  award  salary  according  to  the  quantity  of  his 
students  rather  than  to  the  quality  of  the  pro- 
fessor; Maxwell's  class-room,  was  crowded  with 
men;  there  was  no  occasion  for  him  to  coquet 
with  that  most  mis-placed  female  known  as  the 
"  Co-ed." 

Yet  until  the  advent  of  Jack  Homfrey,  his 

star  student  had  been  a  woman,  and  how  he  had 

begrudged  her  intellect  that  handicap !    So  long 

as  he  had  her  under  his  influence,  all  went  well; 

182 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

but  during  a  vacation  she  fell  a  victim  to  the 
inevitable  and  became  engaged  to  some  insig- 
nificant school  principal  in  the  West.  Bah!  — 
marriage,  the  bearing  of  children,  the  endless 
day  after  day  litter  of  domestic  duties  —  for 
such  a  woman !  It  was  one  more  example  of  the 
brutal  comedy  in  which  Fate  made  sport  of 
human  endowment. 

It  was  the  act  of  a  fool  to  waste  time  on  the 
mental  development  of  women  beyond  a  certain 
point.  But  it  was  the  modern  pose  to  approve 
of  their  playing  with  the  arts  and  sciences ;  to 
affect  belief  in  the  pretense  that  their  souls 
thirsted  for  knowledge  and  a  doctor's  degree. 
What  a  farce !  The  woman  of  high  intellectual 
development  was  a  "  sport,"  an  abnormality. 
Men  understood  that.  And  yet  all  this  asses' 
braying  about  the  higher  education  of  women ! 
And  they  —  God  bless  them  !  —  took  it  seri- 
ousty,  while  all  the  time  the  pretty  one  among 
them,  be  she  fool  or  knave,  held  the  royal  flush, 
and  always  would,  and  every  man  knew  it. 

But  they  could  not  all  have  her!  Hence 
something  must  be  done  to  render  the  undesira- 
ble woman  palatable,  and  that  was  the  meaning 
of  higher  education.  His  star  student  had  been 
a  very  plain  girl,  yet  she  had  found  a  man  will- 
183 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

ing  to  marry  her,  and  in  the  intervals  of  baby- 
minding,  her  expert  knowledge  could  be  sub- 
jected most  effectively  to  her  husband's  service. 

"  Any  questions  ?  " 

Maxwell  glanced  at  Homf rey  —  not  that  he 
expected  any  word  from  him,  but  because  the 
eager  face  was  an  oasis  in  this  desert  of  medi- 
ocrity. When  he  began  to  lecture,  presently,  it 
would  be  to  this  spirit  that  he  would  speak  —  it 
was  enough. 

From  the  back  of  the  room  there  came  a 
voice,  low,  hesitating,  hampered  by  the  painful 
constructing  of  foreign  thinking  into  English 
speaking. 

"  I  should  just  like  to  say,  Professor  Max- 
well, that  these  lectures  on  religion  have  put  me 
into  a  very  uncertain  state  of  mind.  I  feel  as 
if  I  were  hanging  over  a  gulf,  and  did  not  know 
at  what  moment  I  might  fall  in." 

"Fall  in,"  said  Maxwell  promptly.  The 
class  laughed.  "  Suspense  is  the  most  trying 
form  of  torture,  Mr.  Mangasarian." 

"  But  I  can't."  There  was  slow  patience  in 
the  words.  "  When  I  first  came  here,  I  used  to 
listen  to  the  ministers  in  the  churches  all  preach- 
ing what  I  meant  to  go  back  and  preach  to  my 
people,  and  now  I  don't  even  know  whether  they 
believe  they're  preaching  the  truth." 
184 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

"  You  would  split  hairs,  Mr.  Mangasarian. 
The  excellent  gentlemen  you  refer  to,  are  selling 
over  the  counter  the  goods  they  are  paid  to  sell. 
The  church  hires  them  to  preach  its  individual 
creed.  They  preach  it.  The  matter  is  simplic- 
ity itself." 

"  I  don't  see  that,"  persisted  the  student. 
"  Religion  —  the  conscious  relating  of  the  soul 
to  God  — " 

"  Religion  —  the  conscious  relating  of  the 
soul  to  God,"  repeated  Maxwell  — "  but  are  you 
certain  that  the  churches  have  anything  to  do 
with  that  question  ?  " 

"  Well  — "  Mangasarian  paused  — "  they 
profess  to  have  it.  If  they  haven't,  who  has? 
Where  shall  a  man  find  peace?  Is  there  nothmg 
sure,  Professor  Maxwell?  " 

"  What  do  you  want  sure  ?  " 

"  Truth  —  immortality."  Mangasarian  hes- 
itated again,  for  Maxwell  stood  on  the  edge  of 
the  platform,  his  head  thrown  back,  his  eyes 
half-closed,  his  whole  pose  suggestive  of  con- 
temptuous power;  then  he  added  with  a  cer- 
tain stubbornness  of  tone :  "  Salvation  from 
sin." 

It  was  a  daring  phrase  to  venture  in  that 
class-room.  "  Mangasarian  offers  himself  as 
185 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

one  more  Armenian  martyr,"  remarked  Jack  to 
his  neighbour. 

Maxwell  stepped  back.  "  You  give  a  large 
order,  Mr.  Mangasarian,"  he  said  drily.  "  But 
it  is  well  to  remember  that  you  are  at  the  stage 
when  a  man  asks  more  of  the  universe  than  it 
is  in  a  position  to  bestow. —  Truth,  Immortality, 
Salvation  from  sin."  He  smiled.  "  Truth  — 
I  should  think  you  had  been  long  enough  in 
this  class-room  to  know  that  there  is  not  one 
statement  which  has  yet  been  made  by  man  of 
woman  born,  that  we  can  accept  as  truth. 
Broadly  speaking,  there  is  nothing  as  false  as 
what  we  consider  safe  to  accept  as  truth. 

"  Immortality. —  What  do  you  mean  by  that? 
Is  it  an  expression  used  by  you  to  denote  a  state 
in  which  you  are  to  know  happiness?  But  what 
is  happiness?  Have  you  ever  known  it?  If 
you  think  you  have,  it  might  be  well  for  you 
to  reflect  that  you  may  know  for  a  fool  the  man 
who  imagines  he  possesses  it.  Immortality  — 
let  us  analyse  your  definition  —  a  state  in  which 
you  are  to  have  everything  exactly  as  you  wish 
it ;  your  steak  always  tender,  the  woman  you 
love  as  it  pleases  you  to  have  her;  your  balance 
at  the  bank  always  greater  than  your  needs. 
Oh,  to  be  sure,  no  saint  would  admit  it,  Mr, 
186 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

Mangasarian,  but  if  he  could  for  once  be  hon- 
est and  face  it,  this  statement  would  adequately 
represent  his  conception  of  immortality."  Max- 
well shrugged  his  shoulders.  "  The  pious  man 
cants  forsooth,  about  God  and  an  immortality 
in  which  he  will  praise  him  forever !  —  he's  too 
cowardly  to  kick  the  image  he  has  set  up  out  of 
his  scheme  of  immortal  bliss,  but  doesn't  he 
wish  he  could,  Mr.  Mangasarian ! " 

The  little  swarthy,  hesitating,  yet  dogged 
Armenian  essayed  to  speak,  but  Maxwell  bore 
him  down.  "  Your  soul  hungers  and  thirsts  for 
something  to  believe,  I  think  you  said.  Two 
and  two  make  four,  or  so  we  have  agreed  to 
admit  in  the  interests  of  general  convenience. 
Therefore  I  suggest,  that  for  the  present,  you 
cling*  to  the  incontrovertible  fact  of  the  four- 
ness  of  two  and  two.  There  are  discoverable  in 
that  fact  sources  of  power  and  of  inspiration 
not  furnished  to  a  reflecting  spirit  by  any  ec- 
clesiastical creed  it  matters  not  how  audacious, 
nor  how  artfully  constructed. 

"  You  raise  one  other  point,  Mr.  Mangasarian. 
You  speak  of  salvation  from  sin.  Accepting 
that  phrase  in  the  uncritical  sense  in  which  you 
mean  it,  I  may  say  that  I  have  yet  to  come 
across  a  case  in  which  the  theological  effect 
187 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

which  you  thus  describe  has  occurred.  There 
is  no  such  thing  as  salvation  from  sin.  The 
extinction  of  the  spirit  would  be  the  result  of 
such  a  calamity  —  a  calamity  which  thousands 
of  fools  entreat  from  an  unknown  God  every 
day  of  their  lives.  That  which  you  would  em- 
phasize as  conversion  is  merely  a  matter  of  the 
manifestation  of  fixed  laws  in  human  life. 

"  As  to  the  question  of  sin,  we  have  no  satis- 
factory definition  of  what  it  is,  or  what  it  is  not. 
We  have  indeed  a  set  of  conventional  laws  pro- 
mulgated by  God  or  Mrs.  Grundy  —  we  do  not 
know  which  —  they  are  hopelessly  confounded 
in  the  minds  of  us  all,  but  the  actions  of  a  ma- 
jority of  the  inhabitants  of  this  town  for  in- 
stance, lead  us  to  infer  that  the  Ten  Command- 
ments would  mean  a  great  deal  more  to  them  if 
they  were  prefaced  with  the  statement:  And 
Mrs.  Grundy  spake  these  words  and  said  — " 
Maxwell  paused  with  an  expressive  gesture. 

The  class  laughed  again ;  Mangasarian  set- 
tled back  in  his  chair  with  a  defeated  look. 

But  when  Maxwell  spoke  again,  there  was  a 
deeper  note  in  his  voice;  his  jaw  seemed  to  hang 
heavier;  his  gloomy  eyes  with  the  dark  rings 
under  them  were  fixed  on  something  far  beyond 
the  confines  of  that  quiet  room, 
188 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

"  Salvation  from  sin !  There  is  no  such  farce 
of  redemption  as  that  phrase  is  made  to  cover 
possible  to  humanity,  either  through  the  blood 
of  sacrificed  beast,  or  of  the  son  of  God.  If 
man  sins,  he  goes  to  hell,  here,  not  yonder;  and 
in  hell  he  must  work  out  his  own  salvation.  It 
is  to  the  glory  of  us  all  that  there  are  some  few 
spirits  who  do  this  in  every  age. 

"  As  for  your  little  yard-stick  standards  of 
morality  —  Bah ! 

"  What  is  virtue?  —  chastity,  perhaps  you  will 
at  once  think.  And  what  is  chastity  ?  —  one 
thing  among  Jews  and  Mormons  when  the 
necessity  is  upon  them  to  multiply  and  replen- 
ish the  earth,  if  they  would  maintain  themselves 
against  adverse  peoples  and  conditions.  It  is 
easy  to  brand  a  system  of  plural  marriage  and 
concubinage  as  immoral,  if  you  are  outside  of 
the  conditions  which  render  such  imperative. 
Born  a  Jew  or  a  Mormon,  you  would  have  done 
exactly  as  Jew  and  Mormon  did. 

"  I  recommend  it  to  you  as  a  suggestive 
thought  that  the  advancing  prices  and  complexi- 
ties of  modern  living  are  probably  more  produc- 
tive of  many  effects  which  have  the  appearance  of 
an  increased  morality,  than  the  national  domestic 
virtue  on  which  we  are  apt  to  plume  ourselves. 
189 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

Man  is  compelled  to  be  a  monogamist  by  lack 
of  the  conditions  which  would  admit  of  his 
being  a  polygamist." 

It  was  impossible  for  the  class  to  maintain 
seriousness  in  face  of  the  tone  in  which  this  was 
said ;  there  was  an  outburst  of  laughter,  and  a 
general  glance  in  the  direction  of  the  women, 
who  remained  silent. 

"  Two  and  two  are  four,  Mr.  Mangasarian. 
So  at  least  men  of  every  race,  every  colour, 
every  creed  have  agreed  to  accept  as  fact,  and 
as  I  have  intimated,  against  every  creed  yet 
devised  by  human  sophistry,  I  am  willing  to  set 
that  simple  fact,  and  I  invite  you  to  find  in  it 
the  consolation,  which  so  far  as  I  can  see,  re- 
ligion is  at  present  unable  to  give.  But  you 
will  need  the  eye  of  the  spirit  to  discern  the 
hidden  meaning  of  so  stern  a  creed.  You  will 
find  yourself  frequently  tempted  to  act  on  the 
basis  that  two  and  two  make  five.  Don't.  I 
would  remind  you  that  the  time  allowed  you  to 
make  spiritual  mistakes  of  that  kind  is  short. 
Do  I  succeed  in  making  myself  clear,  Mr.  Man- 
gasarian ?  " 

The  question  came  suddenly,  with  the  utmost 
precision  of  politeness. 

"  Yes  sir." 

190 


But  Mangasarian  lied  —  lied  helplessly.  He 
dimly  comprehended  himself  in  the  hands  of  a 
casuist  as  expert  as  the  wiliest  Jesuit,  but  he 
failed,  because  it  reached  him  through  expres- 
sion not  piously  phrased,  to  grasp  the  moral 
significance  of  Maxwell's  long-drawn  answer  to 
his  question.  The  Law,  the  Prophets  and  the 
Gospel  taught  no  greater  truths  than  this  man 
let  fall  by  the  wayside,  casually,  often  indiffer- 
ently. It  amused  him  to  speak  his  word  of  wis- 
dom unemphasized  —  then  to  watch  the  blank 
faces  before  him  across  which  no  gleam  of 
understanding  flashed.  The  wit  of  a  risky  joke, 
the  humour  of  an  audacious  expletive,  his  stu- 
dents appreciated  and  applauded,  but  his  simple 
enunciation  of  some  great  truth  met  with  so 
little  response,  that  it  grew  natural  to  him  to 
utter  it  with  the  blase  air  of  a  man  indifferent 
to  misunderstanding. 

Yet  he  was  not  without  pity.  He  looked  at 
Mangasarian  and  wondered  what  would  become 
of  the  fellow  after  he  got  through  with  him. 
It  seemed  in  a  way  a  hard  reward  for  an  earnest 
soul  —  the  reward  of  doubt,  denial  —  the 
draught  of  Marah  in  place  of  the  sacramental 
Cup ;  the  elements  of  tragedy  were  already  in 
the  man's  face. 

191 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

What  a  weariness !  —  the  whole  damned 
round  of  the  Great  Illusion,  so  inextricably 
woven  of  the  splendours  of  renunciation,  of  the 
glories  of  achievement,  bound  together  by  one 
of  the  most  amazing  and  persistent  of  human 
forces  —  the  force  of  Cowardice. 

That  little  Armenian  —  a  year  ago  he  would 
have  died  undismayed  for  his  "  faith ;  "  to-day 
he  sat  cowering  like  a  frightened  cur  because  he 
had  been  forced  to  face  his  own  self-deception. 

Bah !  —  the  fellow  must  go  the  way  of  all 
human  small  fry;  Maxwell  shrugged  his  shoul- 
ders and  began  his  lecture. 

The  ease  of  his  manner,  the  simplicity  of 
style  which  masked  the  complexity  of  his  mean- 
ing in  clear  poetic  prose,  and  the  paradoxical 
charm  of  the  man  himself,  never  so  evident  as 
when  he  was  face  to  face  with  his  students  — 
all  this  rendered  it  small  wonder  that  his  class- 
room was  crowded.  For  here  was  a  man  pulsing 
the  red  blood  of  his  day  and  generation  —  no 
dried  and  dusty  scholar  groping  in  the  grey  un- 
certainties of  the  Past. 

Thus  these  lectures  on  The  Essential  Ele- 
ments of  Religion  had  a  fascination  not  usually 
possessed  by  such  topics ;  even  the  dullard  lis- 
tened with  a  gratified  perception  that  his  ears 
192 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

were  being  tickled,  and  plumed  himself  on  the 
perspicacity  of  his  intelligence. 

It  was  spring-time  again ;  the  windows  of  the 
class-room  were  open  to  the  wandering  fra- 
grance of  the  blossom-laden  wind ;  the  mystery 
of  breaking  leaf  and  unfolding  bud  was  invest- 
ing with  elemental  beauty  the  meanest  twig,  the 
lowliest  weed ;  the  casts  of  the  great  philoso- 
phers ranged  around  the  room  looked  strange, 
un-human ;  they  represented  the  world's  darkest, 
deepest  thinking,  as  if  it  were  not  enough  just 
to  exist  with  the  sap  of  life's  spring-time  lifting 
lightly  in  the  veins,  and  the  lass  a  lad  dreamed 
of,  a  day  nearer  to  him  than  ever  before ! 

A  whisper  in  the  tree-tops  drove  a  mist  of 
apple-blossoms  through  the  window;  Maxwell 
paused.  To  a  nature  charged  with  an  imagina- 
tion as  complex  as  his, —  brutal,  idealistic ; 
coarse  with  the  coarseness  of  a  man,  and  deli- 
cate with  the  delicacy  of  a  maiden, —  this  day, 
flushed  with  the  falling  of  pink  and  white  petal, 
made  an  appeal  such  as  the  lesser  nerves  of 
these  boys  and  girls  would  never  know.  They 
knew  no  break  in  the  sweep  of  his  subject, 
though  for  a  moment  they  waited  with  pens  sus- 
pended. 

"  The  difference  between  the  man  in  the  mud 
193 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

and  the  one  who  from  the  heights  looks  into  the 
faces  of  the  stars  —  the  difference  between  these 
two  is  but  as  the  difference  caused  by  a  grain 
of  sand  on  this  side  of  the  scale  instead  of  on 
that.  The  same  fierce  passion  that  carried  one 
before  the  throne  of  the  Eternal,  cast  the  other 
into  the  slime.  Saint  and  sinner,  martyr  and 
murderer,  the  vast  difference  is  not  in  them,  but 
in  the  ignorance  with  which  we  behold  them. 
Did  you  never  thinlv  what  amazing  power,  what 
god-like  force  is  revealed  in  the  man  who  can 
rise  to  the  height  of  taking  the  life  of  his  fel- 
low? " 

Maxwell  was  looking  through  the  south  win- 
dow nearest  to  him,  at  the  glory  of  the  sky  and 
the  greening  of  the  tree-tops,  but  what  he  saw 
was  the  storm-swept  hills  of  his  own  gray  land, 
and  he  remembered  —  what  it  was  his  burden  to 
forget. 

"  The  difference  between  the  man  in  the  mud 
and  the  other,  is  not  where  we  put  it.  Both 
seek  the  Vision,  for  I  charge  you  never  to  forget 
that  we  are  so  placed  in  this  world  that  we  are 
not  able  to  escape  seeking  it  —  though  we  some- 
times seek  it  in  strange  places,  gentlemen  —  in 
the  love  of  a  woman,  for  instance  —  the  love  of 
a  woman  — "  the  tone  was  such  that  every  face 
194 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

in  the  room  was  riveted  upon  his  — "  or  in  the 
passion  of  the  wheat-pit.  It  matters  not  where. 
It  is  all  a  manifestation  of  the  mysticism  which 
lies  at  the  root  of  the  simplest  human  act. 

"  But  I  would  remind  you  that  the  only  things 
in  this  world  that  have  been  worth  doing  have 
been  done  by  the  men  who  not  only  have  sought 
the  heavenly  Vision  —  every  man,  saint  or  sin- 
ner, seeks  it  —  but  who  having  seen  it,  have 
been  obedient  unto  it." 

Maxwell  threw  his  note-book  together;  then 
stood  for  a  moment,  motionless,  looking  dully 
at  the  massed  faces  before  him,  his  hold  still  so 
strong  that  no  one  stirred.  Then,  as  the  Uni- 
versity clock  began  its  slow  striking  of  nine,  he 
stepped  off  the  platform  —  the  room  was  in- 
stantly on  its  feet  in  the  rush  for  the  next  class 
—  took  his  old  hat  from  the  peg  and  passed  to 
the  stair-way  which  never  looked  so  narrow  as 
when  a  student  met  him  on  it  —  greeting  with 
a  nod  which  was  more  galling  than  none,  an  in- 
structor who  carried  his  head  with  what  im- 
pressed Maxwell  as  an  undue  appreciation  of 
the  value  of  its  contents.  The  young  Ph.  D. 
prepared  to  speak  to  him,  but  Maxwell  wheeled 
to  the  right  of  the  corridor,  and  in  a  moment 
was  crossing  the  campus,  his  head  sunk  heavily 
195 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

upon  his  shoulders  —  the  whole  man  apparently 
sheathed  in  indifference  to  the  life  about  him. 
Yet  no  member  of  the  Faculty  observed  as  inti- 
mately as  Maxwell  the  nature  of  the  ground 
which  he  tilled. 

A  crowd  of  students  swarmed  out  on  the  steps 
after  him. 

"  What  struck  Maxwell  just  now?  "  said  one 
to  Homfrey. 

"  Hanged  if  it  wasn't  a  sermon!  "  ejaculated 
another. 

Jack  looked  after  the  big  figure  slowly  grind- 
ing up  the  Lake  Walk. 

"  Doesn't  it  strike  you  that  Maxwell's  the 
loneliest  looking  man  you  ever  saw?  "  he  re- 
marked inappositely.  "  Look  at  him !  He's  like 
a  monarch  without  crown  or  kingdom  or  subject. 
He  looks  as  if  he  was  all  alone  on  earth." 

"  Don't  be  so  darned  poetical,  Hefty.  It 
doesn't  sound  well  in  one  of  your  years  and  in- 
discretions." 

Jack  laughed ;  but  his  eyes  followed  Maxwell. 
"  I  maintain  that  there  is  upon  him  the  ma- 
jesty that  isolates  a  throne,"  he  exclaimed  ora- 
torically  —  and  was  pelted  with  jeers. 

Maxwell  and  Jack  met  again  that  day  as  each 
was  crossing  the  campus  in  the  direction  of  his 
dinner.     Maxwell  stopped. 
196 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

"  Pretty  poor  stuff  I  gave  you  fellows  this 
morning."  He  was  clearly  in  his  most  demon- 
driven  mood.  "  And  that  ass  of  a  parson  from 
Windwater  dropped  in  just  at  the  close  of  the 
lecture,  and  came  around  to  see  me  afterwards 
to  thank  me  with  platitudinous  tears  for  my 
*  noble  and  inspiring  words  to  the  dear  young 
people.' — '  What ! '  I  roared.  '  You  mean  to 
say  you  took  that  drivel  seriously ! ' —  O  Lord ! 
the  poor  cuss  looked  at  me  as  if  he  thought  the 
devil  was  about  to  swallow  him.  Ha !  Ha !  " 

Jack  looked  up  sharply.  "  But  — "  he  be- 
gan tentatively  — 

Maxwell  turned  on  his  heel. 


197 


CHAPTER  XII 

Jack  was  roaming  familiarly  about  Max- 
well's study,  pulling  one  book  after  another 
from  the  shelves ;  he  was  a  frequent  and  privi- 
leged visitor.  He  came  presently  to  one  backed 
with  the  statement :  Unphilosophical  Essays  by 
Douglas  Maxwell,  which  he  had  not  noticed  be- 
fore, and  opened  it  with  quick  curiosity ;  then 
paused  to  read  what  was  written  on  the  fly-leaf 
in  the  twisted,  reticent  hand-writing:  To  my 
Wife,  through  whose  inspiration  this  book  was 
written  in  the  first  year  of  our  marriage. 

Jack  involuntarily  closed  the  book,  but  as  he 
did  so,  a  half-sheet  of  note-paper  fluttered  from 
its  pages.  He  caught  it  as  it  fell,  and  saw  that 
it  was  a  poem  with  the  heading:  To  Douglas, 
and  below,  the  simple  signature,  Margaret. 

He  had  hardly  got  the  book  back  on  the  shelf 
when  Maxwell  came  in  and  in  the  breath  of  com- 
ing broke  into  a  story  which  closed  with  no  vir- 
tue left  in  any  woman.  Jack  had  heard  from 
him  many  such;  he  had  learnt  to  think  of  what 
he  would  have  termed  "  experience  "  as  part  and 
198 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

lot  of  life  —  something  which  sooner  or  later, 
no  man  escaped. 

But  to-night  the  boy  found  it  hard  to  laugh ; 
the  spell  of  a  woman's  name  was  upon  him  — 
Margaret!  And  she  had  been  Maxwell's  wife; 
she  had  known  him  as  none  other  could,  and  out 
of  the  heart  of  her  knowledge  she  had  written 
that  faded  little  poem,  To  Douglas. 

Something  exquisitely  sweet  and  pure  —  a 
feeling  akin  to  the  withdrawn  fragrance  of  a 
flower  blooming  against  the  snow,  suffused  his 
heart.  He  thought  of  Lady  —  then  of  the 
story  he  had  just  heard;  his  face  crimsoned. 
Lady !  —  she  lived  among  her  cloistered 
thoughts  like  a  lily  within  its  sheath,  and  her 
husband,  with  a  connoisseur's  appreciation  of 
things  rare  and  delicate,  had  protected  her  from 
all  rough  knowledge  of  the  world.  But  Hom- 
f rey  —  what  did  he  know  of  life,  as  compared 
with  Maxwell! 

Jack  had  been  flattered  at  becoming  his  pro- 
fessor's confidant;  together  they  had  sat  into 
the  deep  hours  of  the  night,  filling  the  room 
with  the  smoke  which  as  it  grew  denser,  became 
a  veil  behind  which  conversation  waxed  free. 
And  all  the  time  in  Maxwell's  life,  there  had 
been  memory  of  this  Margaret,  and  of  "  the 
199 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

first  year  of  our  marriage " —  a  line  penned 
tenderly  by  any  man  or  not  at  all. 

When  had  she  died  ?  —  why  had  Maxwell 
never  even  hinted  of  her  ?  —  the  boy's  imagina- 
tion ran  riot  from  one  question  to  another. 
When  had  Maxwell  ceased  to  be  the  man  who 
wrote  that  dedication  ?  —  or,  had  he  ceased  to 
be  the  man? 

Jack  had  studied  Maxwell  and  his  masks  at 
close  range.  He  realised  that  the  relation  of 
teacher  and  student  would  never  have  developed 
into  a  more  personal  intimacy  save  for  the  fact 
that  Maxwell  had  found  something  in  him  that 
matched  his  own  temperament  —  perhaps  noth- 
ing more  than  an  equality  of  reserve.  Or  per- 
haps this  friendship  was  due  merely  to  his  con- 
venient adaptability  to  a  capriciousness  of  tem- 
per apt  to  confound  the  unwary.  For  to  Jack, 
branded  with  the  sensitive  intuitions  of  the  art- 
ist, Maxwell's  moods  were  easy  reading  —  his 
moods,  but  not  the  man.  The  boy  often  felt 
that  he  knew  as  little  of  the  real  Maxwell  now 
as  he  had  on  the  day  when  they  first  met. 

"  Hullo  youngster !     You're  looking  as  sour 

as  a  green  apple,"  chaffed  Maxwell  suddenly. 

"What's    up?  —  Listen   to   this!"      He   threw 

open  a  leather  bound  book  which  looked  like  a 

200 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

ledger,  but  which  Jack  knew  to  be  his  diary,  and 
began  to  read  an  extract,  rapidly  and  without 
expression.  None  was  needed.  The  thought 
was  so  original,  so  profound,  so  unreserved, 
that  emphasis  here  or  there  would  have  been 
invidious.  It  was  the  revelation  of  a  man  who 
in  solitude  had  learnt  to  fear  no  answer  to 
those  problems  which  he  sought  to  follow  to  ul- 
timity  without  prejudice,  and  who  thus  avenged 
himself  upon  those  tricks  of  mask  and  pose 
whereby  he  daily  played  his  part  before  an  audi- 
ence for  which  he  felt  only  contempt. 

The  riddle  of  life  —  here  in  these  pages  he 
had  wrestled  with  its  mystery;  many  a  night 
until  the  break  of  day  had  he  made  demand: 

"  But  who,  I  ask  Thee,  who  art  Thou? 
Tell  me  Thy  name,  and  tell  me  now." 

The  misery  of  humanity  —  the  gulf  between 
what  man  is  and  what  he  would  be  —  the  ache 
and  despair  of  it,  scoffed  and  moaned  at  its  own 
wretchedness ;  entreated,  blasphemed,  and  in  the 
same  breath  was  caught  up  into  the  seventh 
heaven  in  some  rapt  flight  of  the  imagination 
as  elusively  mystical  as  that  of  any  haloed  seer. 

Suddenly,  the  self-revelatory  narrative  as- 
sumed the  character  of  a  picture  —  a  few  sen- 
201 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

tences,  cold,  grim,  tenacious  —  and  Jack  seemed 
to  see  a  young  mother,  her  child  asleep  upon  her 
knee;  asleep,  but  with  the  sleep  whence  comes 
no  waking. 

A  moment  later,  he  wondered  if  he  had  heard 
aright  —  Maxwell  threw  the  book  down  with  a 
chuckle. 

"  It's  curious  what  extraordinary  effects  you 
can  produce  with  the  most  commonplace  words 
—  if  you  only  know  the  combinations." 

"  It's  the  greatest  thing  that  was  ever  writ- 
ten," said  Jack  solemnly. 

"  You  bet  your  life  it  is,  my  boy !  "  Max- 
well lighted  another  cigarette.  "  Won't  the 
critics  sit  up  when  they  read  it !  Ha !  Ha !  But 
there  won't  be  anything  in  that  for  me." 

"  Then  you  really  do  mean  that  you  won't 
publish  it  during  your  life-time?  " 

"  I'd  get  too  much  satisfaction  out  of  doing 
that.  It  would  almost  make  life  worth  living, 
which  would  be  giving  the  lie  to  my  conviction 
that  it  isn't." 

"  You  won't  let  yourself  get  any  satisfaction, 
out  of  anything?  " 

The  boy  was  pleading,  and  not  only  for  Max- 
well.     Surely  life  meant  something  more  than 
disaster,  despair,  and  at  the  last  a  grim  gather- 
ing of  bones  under  the  sod. 
202 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

"  Satisfaction ! "  Maxwell  threw  back  his 
head  and  laughed  as  mirthfully  as  a  child. 
"  You've  got  a  little  to  learn,  lad.  A  little  to 
learn." 

And  straightway  he  plunged  into  another 
story,  more  desecrating  than  the  first.  There 
appeared  to  be  no  possible  connection  between 
the  man  of  this  moment  and  the  one  whose  lips, 
as  he  had  read,  had  seemed  charged  at  times 
with  a  message  from  some  sublime  height  of 
spiritual  experience. 

But  —  the  man  in  the  mud,  and  the  one  who 
trod  the  stars  —  Jack  remembered  and  under- 
stood. Within  himself  Maxwell  bounded  these 
two,  god  and  devil,  in  such  perfect  balance  as 
is  the  gift  of  few. 

And  to  the  boy,  granted  the  poet's  insight, 
the  thought  came  quick  that  this  was  mighty 
endowment,  but  that  it  carried  with  it,  as  its 
penalty,  far  more  of  hell  than  of  heaven.  This 
man  in  his  blackest  moments  looked  upon  life 
with  the  devil's  own  wisdom,  and  saw  it  filthy, 
accursed,  and  himself  one  with  it. 

And  against  that,  there  was  set  the  eternal 

torment  of  those  visions  which  came  to  him  out 

of  the  dark  of  his  own  soul,  uncalled,  unwel- 

comed ;  a  sign  to  him  of  weakness ;  a  remnant 

203 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

of  that  persistent  Scottish  bias  toward  a  spirit- 
ual interpretation  of  life,  prayed  into  the  very 
marrow  of  their  descendants'  bones  by  scores  of 
grim  fighters  covenanted  against  the  carnal 
man.  But  they  came  to  him,  those  moments 
when  he  knew  himself  immortal,  and  the  very 
flesh  and  blood  of  God. 

"  Oh  damn  it !  "  he  exclaimed  now.  "  You're 
about  as  interesting  a  companion  as  an  empty 
beer-bottle.  Go  and  play  me  something." 

When  Jack  began,  he  sank  back  into  his  low 
chair,  his  knees  almost  on  a  line  with  his  chin, 
for  there  were  two  things  for  which  he  never 
denied  his  love  —  children  and  music.  Pres- 
ently, save  for  the  snap  of  the  match  which 
lighted  one  cigarette  after  another,  he  might 
have  been  deemed  asleep,  he  listened  so  motion- 
less. The  lines  of  his  heavy  face  softened ;  the 
deep  eyes  dreamed. 

And  Jack  dreamed  too.  It  charmed  his  fancy 
to  set  to  tenderest  note  his  vision  of  that  un- 
known woman,  that  Margaret,  queenly  fair  and 
proud,  of  whom  he  knew  nothing,  save  that  after 
one  year  of  marriage,  she  had  still  held  the  heart 
of  Douglas  Maxwell. 

And  while  he  played,  Maxwell  watched  him, 
his  thoughts  reverting  to  the  time  when  he  had 
204 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

been  a  lad  like  that.  But  there  was  no  envy  in 
his  reflections.  Youth  was  a  thing  to  be  got 
rid  of,  a  plague  in  a  man's  memory.  It  stood 
for  ignorance,  crudity,  limitation ;  the  man  who 
was  always  looking  back  to  the  golden  age  of 
his  twenties,  proclaimed  himself  an  ass. 

The  boy  here  —  he  had  a  wearisome  road  to 
travel  before  he  "  came  to  himself."  The 
phrase  struck  Maxwell  anew  with  deep  and  piti- 
ful meaning.  He  had  had  some  interesting  ex- 
periences with  the  impressionable,  imaginative 
stuff  which  had  come  under  his  hand  —  so  eager 
to  be  shaped,  and  he  had  moulded  without  com- 
punction. For  this  boy  above  all  others  must 
know  the  things,  and  think  the  thoughts  of 
which  his  duller  brethren  might  well  remain  ig- 
norant. And  the  cub  had  insaitiate  curiosity; 
he  burnt  to  know.  Maxwell  smiled  grimly,  for 
Jack  was  the  sort  whom  knowledge  seeks. 

But  processes  of  experience  and  disillusion- 
ment ate  up  time,  and  there  was  still  to  come 
the  slow  settling  of  the  man  into  the  sureness 
of  reflective  judgment,  before  he  could  be  con- 
sidered definitely  as  worth  the  reckoning.  It 
was  true  that  a  young  man  as  precocious  as 
Homfrey,  ran  the  gamut  of  immaturity  at  a 
rapid  rate,  aided  as  he  was  by  an  imagination 
205 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

of  unusual  range.  There  came  to  Maxwell's 
mind  a  poem  which  Jack  had  laid  on  his  desk 
one  morning  as  he  passed  —  the  boy  had  au- 
dacity !  —  a  trifle  of  two  stanzas  in  which  he 
had  expressed  a  phase  of  human  passion  it  was 
safe  to  assert  he  would  never  actually  experience, 
with  a  sureness  of  intuition  which  for  an  instant 
staggered  Maxwell. 

"  How's  Betty?  "  he  asked  in  a  pause  of  the 
music. 

"  Betty  ?  "  Jack  got  up,  struck  a  final  group 
of  chords,  then  closed  the  piano.  "  Oh,  she's  still 
Betty." 

"  Well,  I'd  look  out  for  Betty,  if  I  were  you," 
remarked  Maxwell  bluntly.  "  She  has  a  little 
way  of  chewing  fellows  up  that's  the  healthiest 
kind  of  curse  for  the  fellows  perhaps.  She's 
going  to  make  a  devil  of  a  woman,  my  boy." 

"  She  gives  a  fellow  a  good  time."  Jack's 
tone  was  enigmatical. 

"  Oh,  the  best  ever,"  gibed  Maxwell.  "  Bet- 
ty's here  for  business,  though  she  has  brains 
enough  to  pick  up  an  education  as  an  aside." 

"Business?" 

"  Yes.  She's  here  to  get  married  —  or  bet- 
ter." Maxwell  laughed. 

"  Better?  " 

206 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

"  From  Betty's  point  of  view,  I  dare  say. 
That's  all  right.  The  Bettys  are  here  for  as 
good  reasons  no  doubt  as  the  rest  of  us,  but  that 
is  not  sufficient  cause  why  you  should  let  her  — 

"  Marry  me,"  suggested  Jack  audaciously. 

Maxwell  looked  at  him  coolly.  "  You're  safe 
there.  You  haven't  money  enough  to  make  it 
worth  Betty's  while  to  marry  you.  Such  women 
as  she  never  make  the  mistake  of  not  selling 
themselves.  They  understand  their  needs  per- 
fectly. But  you  — " 

Was  it  possible  the  boy  did  not  understand 
what  rare  prey  he  was ! 

"  —  You  — !  "  Maxwell  whirled  round  on  hi* 
chair,  and  picked  up  his  pen. 

"  Bye-bye,   youngster." 

"  Damn  the  boy !  "  he  muttered  half-an-hour 
afterwards.  "  She'll  get  him  sure.  Didn't  the 
fools  who  made  this  institution  co-educational 
know  anything  of  human  nature?  Had  they 
any  reason  to  suppose  boys  and  girls  made  of 
less  inflammable  stuff  than  themselves  ?  " 

He  lit  another  cigarette  —  he  was  popularly 
supposed  to  go  without  sleep  in  order  to  smoke 
—  and  for  a  little  space  let  his  thoughts  dwell 
upon  that  strange  play  of  fate  which  had  al- 
lotted to  him  the  living  out  of  his  days  in  a 
207 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

place  so  far  removed  from  his  beginnings  as 
this.  But  the  nausea  from  which  he  had  suf- 
fered had  been  due  to  no  mere  mistasting  of 
the  epicurean  tid-bits  of  life,  to  be  relieved  by  a 
change  of  scene,  and  a  less  complicated  bill  of 
fare.  Here  in  this  "  simpler  "  life,  humanity 
deceived  itself  in  the  same  dull  ways,  but  with 
far  less  of  the  graces  of  illusion  than  in  the 
older  civilisation.  His  acute  realisation  of  this, 
and  his  consequent  irritation,  led  to  many  of 
those  blunt  remarks  which  were  a  scandal  to 
those  of  his  colleagues  who  interpreted  prudery 
as  an  attribute  of  the  Deity,  and  of  the  Amer- 
ican gentleman. 

Maxwell  did  not  realise  in  what  strong  col- 
ours his  character  was  generally  painted  in 
Waverley.  He  had  no  idea  that  woman  feared 
him. 

"  Damn  that  woman  Rattenbury !  "  he  had 
exclaimed  to  a  colleague  the  night  before,  as 
they  walked  home  together  from  one  of  the  end- 
less receptions  at  which  he  found  it  so  difficult 
to  present  himself  with  a  becoming  smile :  "  She 
always  acts  as  if  she  expected  me  to  indulge  in 
prohibited  courtesies  toward  her.  She  kept  her 
fan  between  me  and  her  lace  yoke  as  if  I  had 
the  small-pox." 

208 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

It  did  not  occur  to  Waverley  feminity  to  think 
of  this  man  as  possibly  purer  of  life  than  such 
assured  models  of  domestic  virtue  as  their  own 
husbands.  A  long  lane,  a  dark  night,  and 
Douglas  Maxwell  was  a  combination  from  which 
might  the  Lord  ever  preserve  them !  He  seemed 
likely  to.  But  it  would  have  been  difficult  to 
convince  them  that  their  escape  was  due  to  the 
nature  of  the  man  He  had  made,  and  not  pri- 
marily to  His  solicitude  for  them. 

When  Jack  reached  the  street  after  leaving 
Maxwell,  he  hesitated  —  took  a  step  or  two, 
then  stopped  again.  He  looked  up,  and  for  a 
moment  lost  himself  in  the  spaces  of  the  night; 
a  line  of  poetry  flowed  into  his  brain  —  an- 
other; presently  the  entire  stanza  was  in  form 
without  more  effort  on  his  part  than  the  invol- 
untary inbreathing  of  the  spirit  of  the  dark- 
ness. 

But  he  pulled  out  his  watch  —  saw  the  time 
in  the  moonlight,  and  turned  sharply  towards 
the  campus,  crossing  it  at  a  run,  his  blood  sing- 
ing in  his  veins  the  strange,  minor-keyed  song 
of  youth.  When  he  reached  the  house  for  which 
he  was  bound,  he  ran  up  the  steps,  opened  the 
door  with  the  sureness  of  familiarity,  and  then 
sprang  up  the  stairs  which  brought  him  directly 
209 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

in  front  of  a  closed  door.    He  tapped  —  listened 
with  his  ear  against  it. 

It  opened,  and  he  stepped  in  quickly,  his 
hand  held  towards  Betty.  But  he  drew  back. 

"  Hullo,  Myers !  "  he  said  shortly. 

The  young  man  lounging  in  the  easy  chair 
nodded  without  moving;  he  had  an  air  of  pos- 
session which  men  calling  upon  Betty  were  apt 
to  acquire. 

Jack  looked  at  Betty ;  his  chin  lifted.  She 
turned  to  her  other  caller. 

"  Oh,  Mr.  Myers,"  she  said  effusively,  stand- 
ing directly  in  front  of  him,  and  looking  at 
him  with  eyes  which  were  very  full,  and  very 
innocent,  and  very  warmly  brown :  "  I  quite 
forgot.  I  shouldn't  have  seen  you  to-night, 
really.  You  made  me  forget.  I  promised  this 
time  to  Mr.  Homfrey,  to  talk  over  some  tiresome 
old  committee  business.  You  won't  mind?  Oh, 
you're  awfully  good.  I  knew  you  wouldn't. 
It's  lovely  of  you.  I  shan't  forget.  Don't  you 
like  people  who  are  perfectly  frank?  Yes,  you 
always  know  where  you  are,  don't  you?  Now, 
you  will  come  again !  " 

Myers  went  away  smiling;  he  meant  to  come 
again ;  he  liked  Betty's  pretty  ways  of  ferment- 
ing a  man's  blood.  That  was  the  sort  of  girl 
for  you! 

210 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

As  for  Betty,  she  shut  the  door  upon  him 
with  a  gesture  of  complete  dismissal,  and  then 
dropped  wearily  into  a  chair. 

"  I'm  so  tired,"  she  said  plaintively.  "  You're 
the  fourth  man  here  to-night,  and  I've  only 
wanted  to  see  two." 

"  The  other?  "  suggested  Jack. 

"  When  do  you  all  think  I  get  my  work 
done?  "  she  demanded,  ignoring  his  question. 
"  I'm  not  here  for  fun.  Take  this  chair."  She 
indicated  the  one  from  which  Myers  had  just 
removed  himself. 

"  Thank  you.  I  don't  believe  I  care  to,"  said 
Jack  elaborately.  "  I  suppose  they've  all  sat 
there." 

She  laughed  softly.  "  Do  you  see  that 
flower?  "  She  pointed  to  a  single  white  rose 
in  a  slender  vase.  "  Mr.  Chase  sends  me  just 
that  one  every  Saturday  night.  Don't  you 
think  it's  a  pretty  idea  ?  " 

"  It's  inexpensive." 

"  That's  the  point.  He  could  send  me  dozens. 
But  he  has  the  grace  to  see  that  —  from  him  — 
one  has  the  elegance  of  distinction." 

"  Wow !  "  exclaimed  Jack  unemotionally. 

"  Have  you  anything  pressing  to  say?  "  she 
asked  presently.  "  Because  if  not,  I'd  be  glad 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

to  run  away  a  moment  —  I  haven't  had  time  to 
get  off  my  street  dress.  I  want  to  put  on  some- 
thing pretty  and  light  —  something  you  might 
perhaps  like  me  in.  It  would  rest  me  better  than 
anything  else  —  to  have  you  like  me  to-night." 

She  smiled  mockingly,  and  then  waited,  look- 
ing at  him  over  her  shoulder.  It  was  rather  a 
favourite  pose,  but  after  she  got  into  her  little 
bedroom,  she  remembered  that  he  had  admired  it 
before.  It  was  difficult  to  keep  poses  tagged  — 
those  you  had  and  had  not  used  —  when  you 
knew  a  good  many  men. 

She  tripped  about,  humming  a  French  song, 
—  every  note  and  every  step, —  the  sweep  of 
her  silk  skirt, —  all  was  calculated  with  refer- 
ence to  the  fact  that  the  least  movement  was 
audible  beyond  the  curtain  which  served  as  a 
door. 

For  of  such  was  the  freedom  accorded  to  co- 
educated  man  and  maid  at  Waverley.  To  in- 
sinuate that  danger  might  inhere  in  such  lati- 
tude of  propinquity,  would  have  been  regarded 
as  casting  a  slur  upon  the  morals  of  American 
youth,  and  as  a  deplorable  indication  of  a  trans- 
atlantic looseness  of  character.  The  importun- 
ity of  sex  might  operate  dangerously  among 
peoples  bound  to  be  born  with  uncertain  virtue; 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

it  was  otherwise  in  a  land  where  boys  and  girls 
were  brought  up  upon  those  respectable  ideals 
which  ignored  the  possibility  in  themselves  of 
what  should  decently  be  classed  as  abnormal 
tendencies. 

But  Betty  Carter  could  have  told  the  sage 
innocents  who  undertook  to  operate  a  university 
on  a  kindergarten  system,  a  few  truths  in  re- 
gard to  the  nature  of  the  babes  in  its  care  which 
would  have  shocked  them  immeasurably.  The 
Dean  of  Waverley  also  could  have  added 
materially  to  her  evidence,  but  he  remained  non- 
committal behind  his  invariable  smile.  For  if 
the  people  of  the  state  preferred  co-education 
on  this  wide  open  plan  for  their  sons  and  daugh- 
ters —  so  be  it.  When  a  girl  rashly  shot  her- 
self—  well,  a  certain  number  of  girls  must 
shoot  themselves  annually,  in  deference  to  sta- 
tistical demands.  It  was  not  to  be  supposed  that 
rules  and  regulations  determining  the  limits  of 
youthful  freedom  could  avail  against  laws  as 
fixed  as  the  setting  of  the  sun. 

Laissez  faire!  That  was  the  true  American 
spirit,  and  besides,  it  was  not  your  daughter. 

And  so  Betty  Carter  moved  about  her  little 
room,  humming  her  song  undisturbed.  She 
belonged  to  a  sorority,  but  it  would  not  have 
213 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

suited  her  tastes  to  live  in  the  house.  She  ar- 
gued with  her  sisters  that  she  was  too  unadapta- 
ble to  relate  herself  other  than  theoretically  to 
the  community  idea.  She  liked  quiet,  and  as 
old  Mrs.  Carey  took  no  other  roomers,  she  was 
able  to  have  it.  In  her  first  year  she  had  made 
an  admirable  impression  upon  her  landlady ;  it 
had  served  her  well  since. 

"  What  an  age  you're  taking,"  called  Jack 
at  last. 

Betty  made  no  answer.  Instead  she  stood  si- 
lent, the  light  turned  out  in  her  little  room.  She 
was  thinking  —  and  smiling. 

Betty  had  the  advantage  of  most  people  in 
always  knowing  what  she  wanted,  and  in  per- 
ceiving generally  what  was  the  quickest  and 
surest  way  of  obtaining  it.  She  meant  to 
climb,  and  she  had  early  discovered  that,  for 
her,  the  necks  of  men  would  be  provided  as 
stepping-stones.  She  had  canvassed  the  subject 
of  marriage  with  rare  impartiality,  even  to  the 
extent  of  concluding  that  it  had  not  all  the 
charms  of  its  counterfeit.  In  history  it  was  the 
mistresses  of  great  men  who  scored,  and  though' 
it  was  no  longer  the  style  to  have  them  in  such 
evidence  as  formerly,  she  saw  no  reason  to  sup- 
pose that  the  blood  of  men  was  other  than  it 
had  been. 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

Betty  had  the  intuition  of  the  born  courtesan, 
who  knows  without  learning  the  value  of  her 
temperament  to  herself  and  to  the  man. 

She  hurried  each  morning  to  an  early  class, 
her  books  under  her  arm,  a  charming  picture  of 
the  simple  school-girl.  She  was  an  apt  student, 
but  her  adjustment  to  her  particular  needs  of 
the  knowledge  set  forth  by  various  lecturers, 
would  have  amazed  some  of  those  gentlemen. 
It  suited  her  to  hear  that  virtue  was  a  mere 
matter  of  convention  —  one  thing  under  these 
conditions ;  another,  under  those.  She  smiled 
at  the  bewildered  students  who  mourned  the 
vanishing  from  them  of  all  in  which  they  had 
been  taught  to  have  faith;  she  was  so  relieved 
to  feel  that  there  was  nothing  it  was  necessary 
to  believe,  and  to  know  that  your  goodness  or 
your  badness  had  no  effect  as  against  the  opera- 
tion of  law  in  the  universe.  She  had  the  tidi- 
ness of  character  which  belongs  to  people  of 
great  organising  ability,  and  she  liked  to  feel 
that  things  in  general  ran  smoothly  while  she 
did  exactly  as  she  chose. 

Betty  was  a  fine  example  of  the  working  of 
the  law  of  reaction ;  she  was  the  daughter  of  a 
Presbyterian  minister  who   had  committed  her 
to  Waverley  with  many  prayers. 
215 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

During  her  first  two  years,  she  had  had  a 
desultory  acquaintance  with  Jack  Homfrey. 
But  he  had  not  liked  her,  and  as  she  had  felt 
that  there  were  enough  who  did,  it  seemed  that 
she  could  afford  to  ignore  him.  But  in  his 
third  year  he  attracted  so  much  attention,  that 
Betty  pondered.  She  knew  that  he  devoted  him- 
self singly  to  no  girl ;  he  appeared  to  like  many 
with  equal  indifference.  Yet  he  had  such  prodi- 
gal ways  of  charming,  that  it  was  hard  for  the 
girl  who  discovered  that  his  impressive  atten- 
tions were  devoid  of  intentions,  and  of  late  he 
had  grown  chary  of  his  courtesies ;  it  was  an- 
noying sometimes  to  have  moonlight  and  the 
moment  interpreted  seriously. 

Betty  pondered ;  it  would  be  a  triumph  worth 
while  to  have  her  name  exclusively  associated 
with  Jack's. 

It  took  patience  and  courage,  but  she 
achieved.  When  the  blood  is  but  twenty,  it 
flows  fast  on  occasion.  And  she  had  a  powerful 
ally  in  a  condition  of  which  she  was  ignorant: 
for  Jack  stood  alone  now,  his  heart  sore  at 
Richarda's  neglect  of  him.  He  felt  the  need 
of  praise,  sympathy ;  of  the  tenderness  against 
which  he  had  been  so  free  to  lean.  And  this 
girl  offered  all  that,  at  first  tentatively,  then 
216 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

more  and  more  boldly,  as  she  divined  his  neces- 
sity. 

So  Betty  waited  for  a  moment,  silent  in  her 
room,  and  smiled.  For  she  was  not  sure  what 
she  meant  to  do  with  Jack,  and  for  the  first 
time  in  her  life,  indecision  was  sweet  to  her. 
She  was  beginning  to  be  afraid  that  she  cared, 
and  she  had  not  allowed  for  that  in  her  plans. 
She  understood  herself  well  enough  to  know 
that  it  brought  into  their  relation  a  danger  that 
had  to  be  considered,  but  that  greatly  enhanced 
its  fascination. 

"  Betty ! " 

She  pushed  the  curtain  aside.  "  Oh  Jack," 
she  said  softly,  with  her  finger  on  her  lip,  "  it's 
almost  one  o'clock.  I  didn't  know.  That's  fear- 
ful. You  ought  not  to  be  here." 

But  she  came  towards  him.  And  she  was 
something  for  a  lad  to  reckon  with.  She  was 
tired ;  her  weariness  softened,  refined  her,  and 
in  the  dim  light  she  looked  delicately  pale.  Her 
long  clinging  gown  harmonised  delicately  with 
her  colouring  —  a  deeper  tone  of  copper  in  the 
girdle  about  her  waist  matched  the  lights  in  her 
eyes  and  hair. 

She  was  delicately  pale,  but  her  lips  were 
very  red. 

217 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

She  came  near  —  but  she  looked  away. 

"  Jack ! " 

A  breeze  light  as  the  breath  of  a  hovering 
spirit,  stirred  the  curtain  at  the  open  window. 

And  a  long  shiver  ran  through  Jack. 

"Betty,  don't!"  he  cried  sharply.  "Don't 
look  at  me  like  that." 

"  I  don't  know  what  you  mean,"  she  said 
blankly.  "  I  wasn't  looking  at  you." 

Her  eyes  filled  with  angry  tears. 


218 


CHAPTER  XIII 

Homfrey  and  Dawson  were  chatting  together 
in  the  library  over  an  evening  smoke,  when  the 
door  opened ;  Jack  looked  in. 

"  Hullo !  You  in  from  Waverley  ? "  re- 
marked Homfrey.  "  It's  quite  a  time  since  we 
saw  you." 

"Yes.    Is  Lady  in?" 

"  I  believe  not."  Homfrey  turned  to  Daw- 
son.  "  You  were  saying  that  Morgan  thinks  he 
can  raise  the  loan  by  the  twentieth  — " 

"  I  beg  your  pardon,  but  can  you  tell  me 
when  you  think  she  is  likely  to  be  in?  " 

"  Yes,  yes,"  answered  Dawson  hurriedly  for 
Homfrey.  "  She's  gone  to  some  bazaar  affair 
with  my  wife  —  ecclesiastical  bucket-shop. 
She'll  be  in  presently.  In  the  meantime,  how's 
Waverley  these  days?  " 

"  Oh,  the  sun's  rising  and  setting  there  the 
same  old  way." 

"  See  much  of  that  man  Maxwell?  " 

"  A  good  deal." 

"  That  article  of  his  on  The  American  Idea 
219 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

in  Education  is  raising  the  dust,  isn't  it?  The 
dry  bones  are  up  and  at  him  in  great  shape." 

"  Yes.     He's  well  pleased." 

"  I  can't  think  why  a  man  who  writes  as  he 
does,  doesn't  write  more.  He  seems  to  be  con- 
tent just  to  be  a  college  professor,  when  he 
might  make  a  great  name  for  himself." 

"  He  expects  to." 

"  Well,  I'm  glad  to  hear  it,"  said  Dawson 
genially.  "  Most  of  us  think  that  takes  some 
sweating." 

"  I  suppose  so." 

The  boy  was  still  standing,  his  foot  on  the 
threshold ;  the  brevity  of  his  replies  matched  his 
attitude.  Dawson  felt  nervous,  as  he  always 
did  when  Homfrey  and  Jack  were  alone  to- 
gether without  Richarda,  and  he  was  wondering 
what  topic  could  be  pursued  under  such  dis- 
couragement, when  Homfrey,  who  had  been  pac- 
ing the  floor,  paused  suddenly  almost  in  front 
of  Jack. 

"  That's  a  nice  scandal  you've  got  yourself 
mixed  up  in,  I  must  say.  It's  a  new  experi- 
ence for  the  name  of  Homfrey."  The  deliber- 
ate words  bit.  "  Possibly,  however,  you  are  not 
sensitive  on  that  score." 

Jack  sprang  forward  —  then  held  himself. 
220 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

But  for  the  moment,  the  two  faces  were  those  of 
men  ready  to  strike. 

And  there,  with  expressions  set  by  the  same 
emotions,  the  pose  of  each  figure  a  reproduction 
of  the  other  —  the  throw  of  the  head,  the  tense 
line  of  the  lips,  the  very  clenching  of  the  hands 
—  in  this  bitter  moment  the  betrayal  of  the  one 
by  the  other  was  complete. 

And  Dawson,  watching,  saw  —  and  in  a  flash 
that  dazed,  understood. 

"  My  God !  "  He  smothered  the  exclamation 
as  it  fell  from  his  lips,  and  shrank  back  in  his 
chair.  He  could  not  think,  and  yet  somewhere 
in  his  mind  there  seemed  to  be  thundering  dully 
the  wonder  that  he  had  not  seen  before  what  was 
now  so  appallingly  clear  to  him. 

He  was  afraid  to  look  up;  he  sat  numb,  just 
feeling  the  horror  of  those  two  faces  fixed  upon 
each  other;  he  felt  that  he  ought  to  say  some- 
thing ;  the  thing  was  an  outrage.  But  he  could 
think  of  nothing  to  do  or  to  say.  But  he  must. 
If  he  did  not  — 

The  door  opened ;  Richarda  stood  there,  a 
smile  quick  to  her  lips  at  the  sight  of  Jack. 
But  in  the  instant,  her  expression  changed,  and 
as  suddenly  the  two  men  stepped  apart,  their 
eyes  away  from  each  other  and  from  her. 
221 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

"  Tim  —  Jack  —  what  is  it  ?  "  Her  voice 
faltered ;  she  caught  the  back  of  a  chair. 
"  What  —  are  you  — "  she  could  not  go  on ; 
she  grew  white. 

"  Nothing,  Charda  —  nothing,"  said  Hom- 
frey swiftly. 

But  Jack  was  in  flame.  "  Nothing?  "  he  re- 
peated in  challenging  interrogative.  "  Noth- 
ing? except  that  Mr.  Homfrey  says  — "  then 
he  stopped  and  looked  at  Richarda ;  there  was 
something  in  her  eyes  that  hurt  him.  If  only 
she  understood,  and  would  sympathise,  and  be 
glad.  What  he  meant  by  that  was  that  she 
should  be  proud  of  him,  and  say  so.  "  Oh  Lady, 
it  isn't  true,  what  the  Journal  said.  That's 
why  I'm  here  to-night.  In  the  morning  I'll 
make  somebody  on  that  paper  eat  his  words,  or 

—  and  those  horrible  things  about  me !  —  who 
I  am,  and  even  about  you.     And  don't  you  see? 

—  I  can't  straighten  it  out.     I  don't  know  who 
I  am,  Lady.     I  thought  perhaps  — " 

"  You  see,  it's  all  right,  Mrs.  Homfrey."  It 
was  Dawson  who  spoke ;  he  was  not  quite  sure 
what  he  was  saying,  but  all  his  protective  in- 
stincts were  aroused  in  defence  of  this  woman, 
who  stood  there  silent,  looking  now  neither  at 
Jack  nor  at  her  husband.  "  Jack  will  explain 
222 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

to  us.  Of  course  he  can.  Let  me  help  you  off 
with  your  wrap.  It  seems  very  warm  in  here, 
and  yet  I  thought  the  evening  was  rather  cool. 
The  weather's  changed,  I  suppose." 

By  this  time  Richarda  was  in  the  chair  he 
had  drawn  forward ;  he  could  feel,  as  it  seemed, 
in  his  own  heart,  the  tremendous  fight  for  self- 
control  that  was  raging  in  her  —  that  showed 
in  her  hands  as  she  slowly  unbuttoned  her 
gloves. 

But  she  looked  up  at  him  —  a  smile  flickered 
about  her  wan  mouth. 

"  Mrs.  Dawson  —  Mrs.  Dawson  said  she 
would  go  —  right  home.  She  was  anxious 
about  Bessie.  Bessie  gets  —  she  gets  croup, 
doesn't  she?  " 

"  Oh  Lord,  yes !  She  gets  croup  all  right," 
said  Dawson  in  a  tone  that  he  vaguely  sup- 
posed to  be  comforting.  "  It's  a  mean  kind  of 
a  thing  —  croup." 

He  babbled  on  with  mechanical  loquacity,  and 
even  lured  Homfrey  into  a  remark  concerning  a 
question  of  local  politics.  Anything,  to  give 
this  woman  time! 

And  all  the  while  he  was  thinking  of  the 
secret  of  those  two  faces. 

"  Well,  I'd  better  be  going,"  said  Jack. 
223 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

Richarda  had  not  looked  at  him  since  that  first 
moment;  she  was  angry,  of  course,  because  he 
had  brought  up  the  forbidden  question.  But 
when  it  had  become  matter  for  a  sensational 
newspaper,  it  was  surely  her  duty  to  place  her 
knowledge  of  him  in  his  hands.  "  Harring's 
in  town  to-night.  He'll  be  looking  for  me  at 
his  place." 

"  No."  It  was  the  stillest  word ;  Richarda 
put  out  her  hand.  "  You'll  stay  here,  Jack." 

Homfrey  turned  with  a  sharp  movement  — 
he  was  about  to  speak,  but  Dawson  broke  in. 

"  What's  the  racket  anyway,  Jack? "  he 
asked  in  an  open,  genial  voice  which  seemed  to 
clear  the  air.  "  You're  no  grafter.  What  have 
they  got  you  mixed  up  in  the  row  for?  " 

Better  let  the  boy  cool  his  blood  in  talk,  now 
that  so  much  had  been  said.  College  matters 
must  be  safe  enough.  As  for  the  rest  —  but 
there  Dawson  halted. 

Jack  unconsciously  squared  his  shoulders. 
"  I  am  mixed  up  in  it.  There's  hardly  anything 
in  college  that  I'm  not  mixed  up  in.  This  time 
the  Faculty  got  a  virtuous  streak,  and  made  up 
its  mind  to  clean  out  '  graft '  in  the  student 
organisations.  That's  all  right.  But  they  go 
at  it  all  wrong.  They  get  hold  of  little  Billy 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

Park,  who  is  about  as  innocent  a  thing  as  there 
is  on  the  Campus.  He  was  chairman  of  the  comr- 
mittee  on  the  class  button,  and  thought  it  was 
the  usual  courtesy  when  Klein  and  Webster  of- 
fered him  what  was  virtually  a  commission  on 
the  order.  But  the  Faculty  jumps  on  him,  and 
then  lets  Hoffman,  the  meanest  cheat  we've  got, 
go  scot  free  because  he's  president  of  the  stu- 
dents' Y.  M.  C.  A.  They're  afraid  to  jump  on 
him,  because  the  grannies  think  it  might  injure 
the  4  cause.'  They  don't  seem  to  understand  that 
it  injures  the  *  cause '  much  more  not  to  jump  on 
on  him.  A  fellow  who  takes  his  notes  to  exam- 
inations !  — "  Jack  lifted  his  shoulders. — "  Billy 
Park  would  cut  off  his  right  hand  before  he 
would  do  that." 

The  boy  was  afire  now ;  he  stood  in  the  middle 
of  the  room,  master  of  it. 

"  Do  you  think  I'd  stand  that?  —  to  see  little 
Billy  suspended  for  six  months,  when  I  knew  his 
mother  had  all  she  could  do  to  keep  things  going 
until  he'd  graduate  in  June ! 

"  Those  professors  —  those  regents  —  they 
aren't  czars  with  power  to  do  right  or  wrong  as 
it  suits  their  whim.  Did  they  suppose  we'd  all 
keep  still  and  see  that  kind  of  thing  go  through  ? 
—  No  \  — "  the  two  slight  hands  came  together 
225 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

in  an  excited  blow.  "  Someone  had  to  wade  in. 
I  said  I  was  willing  to.  The  end  of  the  thing 
was  that  I  sent  in  a  request  to  the  Faculty,  stat- 
ing my  right  as  a  protesting  student  to  meet 
them,  and  submit  to  them  another  view  of  the 
matter." 

A  muffled  exclamation  escaped  Dawson  —  he 
looked  at  Homfrey.  How  could  the  man  sit 
there,  so  withdrawn,  so  steeled  against  this  boy? 

But  Homfrey  was  listening  —  stirred  as  no 
one  else  in  the  room  was  stirred,  by  the  dramatic 
simplicity  with  which  Jack  told  his  story.  It 
appealed  to  the  forensic  side  of  him  as  a  fine 
piece  of  work,  but  that  only  increased  his  irrita- 
tion. Here  again,  was  this  boy  doing  just  what 
he  might  have  done  when  he  was  a  student.  This 
was  not  a  matter  of  clever  imitation  —  it  was 
as  the  original  work  of  his  own  mind.  In  his 
college  days,  he  had  been  the  torment  of  the 
authorities  by  the  brilliance  alike  of  his  good 
and  evil  deeds.  The  uneventful  mean  of  medi- 
ocrity had  never  appealed  to  him.  It  never 
would  to  this  fellow.  One  had  only  to  look  at 
him  to  perceive  that. 

Richarda  sighed.  Jack  turned  to  her,  and 
for  the  first  time  smiled:  for  she  was  looking  at 
him.  "  There  was  an  awful  rumpus  then, 
226 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

Lady,"  he  said  sweetly.  "  Maxwell  told  me 
afterwards." 

"  Did  he  stand  by  you  ?  "  she  asked  in  a  voice 
so  light  that  it  seemed  as  if  she  feared  the  sound 
cf  it. 

Jack  laughed.  "  He  stand  by  me?  —  Never ! 
That  isn't  Maxwell.  He  stood  o/f,  and  laughed 
at  the  whole  show  —  at  the  Faculty,  at  me,  and 
probably  at  himself.  But  after  all  —  Oh,  I 
know  he  wasn't  ashamed  of  me." 

The  last  words  sank  —  they  were  meant  for 
Lady  alone.  For  the  boy's  heart  was  aching  for 
a  sign  from  her  —  he  must  know  that  she  "  stood 
by." 

"  My  poor  Jack ! "  It  was  a  cry,  just 
breathed.  But  he  heard  it. 

"  It  was  a  show,  too.  They  had  a  lot  of 
meetings  before  they  gave  in  to  the  idea  of  allow- 
ing a  student  to  have  his  say  in  the  matter.  But 
I  got  what  I  was  after  at  last,  even  though  it 
came  in  the  form  of  a  *  summons  to  appear,'  as 
it  were.  That  suited  me.  At  the  time  ap- 
pointed, I  '  appeared.'  It  was  pretty  exciting, 
Lady." 

Again  there  was  the  note  of  craving  for  the 
sympathy  that  was  so  necessary  to  him.  He  re- 
alised that  had  he  been  a  son,  his  family  would 
227 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

have  known  this  story  by  now  from  beginning  to 
end  —  that  he  would  have  been  welcomed  home 
as  a  hero.  For  as  a  hero  he  had  left  Waverley 
that  evening,  lifted  on  board  the  train  over  the 
shoulders  of  densely  massed  students.  He  had 
scored  a  triumph,  and  here,  in  the  place  that  he 
had  called  home,  it  was  thrown  back  at  him  as 
disgrace. 

"  Yes,  yes !  "  In  this  moment  Richarda  gave 
to  him  all  that  he  asked.  "  And  what  happened 
then?" 

"  What  happened? "  Jack's  head  was  up. 
"  Why,  I  just  talked  to  them.  That  was  all.  I 
said  everything  I  had  ever  thought  someone 
ought  to  say  to  them.  I  gave  them  the  straight 
of  the  whole  *  graft '  business.  I  didn't  let 
Hoffman  off  either.  When  I  first  mentioned 
him,  two  of  his  protectors,  whose  feet  he  has 
always  licked,  jumped  up.  I  went  right  on, 
but  they  drowned  me  out.  I  waited  until  I  had 
a  chance.  Then  I  said :  '  Gentlemen,  if  you 
wish  to  hear  the  truth,  you  will  give  me  the 
courtesy  of  a  hearing.  But  it  is  your  privilege 
to  refuse  to  hear  the  truth  as  the  students  know 
it.' " 

"  Great ! "  Dawson  could  not  keep  still  an  in- 
stant longer. 

228 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

"  There  was  the  funniest  quiet  after  that. 
When  I  was  done  with  Hoffman  —  well,  just  for 
a  moment  I  waited.  I  was  sort  of  frightened  all 
at  once.  But  I  remembered  what  I  had  deter- 
mined I  would  say,  before  I  came,  and  I  knew 
I  must  stick  it  out  if  I  was  to  keep  faith  with  the 
fellows.  And  I  waded  in.  I  asked  how  many 
of  the  professors  were  in  a  position  to  kick  when 
it  came  to  the  question  of  graft.  I  said : '  What 
about  text-books  ?  '  Then  I  heard  Maxwell's 
great  laugh.  It  tore  me  wide  open.  I  knew 
what  he  was  thinking  —  he  hadn't  believed  I  had 
the  grit  to  take  that  up.  So  I  said :  '  What 
about  the  order  for  a  new  edition  of  England 
in  the  Sixteenth  Century,  because  of  the  inser- 
tion of  one  new  chapter  which  the  professor 
could  very  well  have  given  to  the  class  in  an  hour 
or  two  ?  ' —  I  gave  instance  after  instance  of 
such  cases  —  of  books  thrown  out  merely  in 
order  to  swell  royalties  —  the  royalties  of  the 
professors  who  had  written  them." 

"  Jack !  How  could  you  ?  "  Richarda's  eyes 
shone. 

"  That  brought  a  dozen  of  them  up.  But  I 
was  done.  I  had  said  all  I  came  to  say.  No- 
body noticed  me  as  I  went  out:  for  those  who 
weren't  laughing  at  somebody  else  were  too  mad. 
229 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

And  once  outside,  I  laughed  too.  It  all  seemed 
so  silly.  But  it  hadn't  while  I  was  in  it. 

"  The  fellows  were  waiting  for  me  in  a  bunch. 
I  said:  'Well,  I've  done  it  —  just  the  way  I 
told  you  I  would.'  That  seemed  to  scare  them. 
It  sort  of  scared  me  too,  when  I  saw  they  hadn't 
really  expected  me  to. —  We  all  went  back  to 
the  house,  as  solemn  as  a  funeral.  They 
couldn't  do  enough  for  me.  You  see,  they 
thought  I  was  as  good  as  kicked  out  already. 

"  After  that  we  waited,  expecting  every  day 
that  something  would  happen,  but  nothing  did. 
That  was  sort  of  discouraging,  for  we  had  got 
ourselves  ready  for  a  great  deal.  And  it  wasn't 
until  Tuesday  morning  that  an  insignificant  note 
appeared  in  the  University  Happenings  column 
of  the  papers,  saying  that  the  Faculty  had  voted 
to  reconsider  the  case  of  a  recently  suspended 
Senior,  some  further  evidence  in  the  matter  hav- 
ing come  under  their  notice.  It  was  a  kind  of 
sneaky  way  for  them  to  do  it,  but  after  all  it  was 
a  big  back-down.  The  fellows  went  crazy,  and 
I  —  well,  I  felt  sort  of  set  up,  Lady."  Jack 
laughed  happily. 

Richarda  was  divided  between  emotions  — • 
pride  in  the  boy  who  thus  justified  her  faith  in 
him,  and  deadly  fear  of  that  question  he  had  not 
230 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

shrunk  from  asking  here.      She  smiled,  while  her 
lips  trembled. 

"  But  last  night  Maxwell  told  me  —  we  hadn't 
spoken  of  the  matter  at  all  before  that  —  that's 
like  him,  you  know  —  well,  he  told  me  that  after 
I  left  that  meeting,  there  was  what  he  called  a 
'  hell  of  a  good  time.'  They  talked  themselves 
madder  and  hoarser  until  somebody  started  a 
call  for  '  Maxwell.'  He  got  up  and  said, 
'  Thank  you,  gentlemen,'  and  sat  down.  Then 
of  course  they  simply  howled  for  him.  At  last 
he  got  up  again,  and  said:  '  Gentlemen,  at  least 
let  us  not  prove  ourselves  to  be  the  asses  the  stu- 
dents evidently  consider  us,  not  to  speak  of 
knaves.  I  move  that  we  reconsider  the  case  of 
Park.' 

"  Never !  —  they  would  resign  first.  But  they 
carried  that  motion  just  the  same.  And  since 
then  every  effort  has  been  made  to  hush  the 
thing  up. 

"  In  the  meantime  — "  there  was  no  smile  on 
Jack's  face  now  — "the  story  in  the  Journal  that 
I  was  summoned  before  the  Faculty  on  charges 
of  graft,  is  a  lie  which  I  propose  to  settle  for 
to-morrow." 

"  Yes,  yes,  my  boy,"  said  Dawson  quickly. 
"  You'll  have  to  fix  that  up.  If  you  want  any 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

help,  let  me  know.  Guess  I'll  have  a  little  talk 
with  Finch  over  the  phone  in  the  morning  any- 
way. I'll  tell  him  a  few  things  I'm  sure  he  will 
appreciate  knowing.  By  the  way,  Mrs.  Hom- 
f rey,  have  you  heard  from  Mrs.  Lewin  lately  ?  " 

It  was  time  for  Dawson  to  go  home ;  he  knew 
that,  but  he  too  was  fearing  the  question  Jack 
had  asked.  He  saw  that  every  now  and  then 
Richarda  grew  as  white  as  she  had  when  she 
first  came  in ;  he  began  to  understand  of  what 
she  was  afraid,  or  he  thought  he  did.  No ;  he 
was  not  even  sure  of  that. 

"  Hattie  ?  —  Oh  yes,  I  hear  from  her  rather 
often.  I  think  I'm  a  sort  of  safety-valve  for 
her.  She's  living  in  a  cottage,  and  doing  her 
own  work.  Isn't  she  a  wonder?  " 

"And  Tommy?" 

"  It  seems  to  be  harder  on  him  than  on  her. 
He  can't  get  used  to  seeing  her  work.  He  has 
begun  to  make  money,  and  he  would  like  to  see 
her  use  it.  But  she  won't.  She  says  that  to 
satisfy  her,  he  has  to  be  a  bigger  man  than  he 
was  before,  and  that  that's  going  to  take  time 
and  all  the  money  they  can  save.  She  doesn't 
believe  that  he's  really  convinced  that  she  has 
come  to  stay,  yet.  She  has  to  remind  him  con- 
tinually that  she's  there.  '  for  keeps.'  " 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

"  Bless  my  soul ! "  exclaimed  Dawson : 
"  Women  —  well,  women  — " 

A  strange  little  smile  crossed  Richarda's  face. 
"Yes,  aren't  they?" 

He  got  up  to  go,  for  there  seemed  nothing  else 
to  do.  "  You  bring  the  Journal  up  standing  in 
the  morning,"  he  said  to  Jack;  then  he  turned 
to  Homfrey. 

But  Jack  spoke.  "  What  chance  have  I  to 
bring  the  Journal  up  standing?  I  don't  care 
anything  about  the  graft  question.  It's  the 
rest  of  that  article  that  matters.  I  want  to 
know  who  I  am.  I'm  tired  of  the  shame  of  not 
knowing." 

He  looked  at  Richarda.  As  if  called  to  judg- 
ment she  rose  from  her  chair,  but  with  a  stillness 
of  movement  that  had  a  certain  majesty. 

"  I  want  to  know,  Lady."  Jack's  tone  was  a 
demand. 

For  a  moment  Richarda  looked  at  him;  her 
eyes  wandered  first  to  Dawson,  then  to  her  hus- 
band. 

"  Tim !  "  The  word  broke  from  her  —  it  was 
a  cry  to  him. 

"  Good    Lord !  "     exclaimed     Homfrey  —  he 
threw  down  his  book  — "  It  seems  to  me  you  have 
a  taste  for  the  melodramatic,  young  man."     He 
233 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

glanced  contemptuously  at  Jack.  "  But  you, 
Charda  — "  his  voice  softened  — "  tell  him 
what  he  wants  to  know.  But  haven't  you  told 
him?" 

"  No."     It  was  Jack  who  answered. 

Homfrey  ignored  him.  "  Tell  him,  dear.  I 
think  he  ought  to  know  all  that  you  do." 

llicharda  was  silent  —  her  eyes  did  not  leave 
her  husband's  face. 

"  Tell  him !  "  repeated  Homfrey.  There  was 
a  touch  of  impatience  in  his  voice. 

"  You  would  have  me  tell  him,"  she  said. 
There  was  no  life  in  the  words. 

"  My  dear,  yes  !  The  sooner  the  better.  Why 
not?  Though  I  should  think  your  protege 
would  regret  his  importunity.  I  should  have 
imagined  that  in  a  case  like  this,  ignorance  was 
preferable  to  knowledge." 

Jack  stepped  forward.  The  strain  of  the 
past  weeks  was  telling  upon  him ;  there  had  been 
so  much  excitement,  and  on  top  of  everything 
this  article  in  the  Journal,  spiced  with  inuendo 
— inspired  doubtless  by  the  discredited  Hoff- 
man. 

Yet  for  a  moment  he  hesitated ;  he  had  a  be- 
wildered sense  that  because  of  Lady  he  must  not 
speak  —  he  had  forgotten  just  why  —  he  felt 
234 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

suddenly  tired  of  everything.  But  he  ought  to 
know. 

"  Lady !  "  he  said  imploringly. 

Richarda  looked  at  him,  but  as  if  she  did  not 
see  him  —  he  had  a  strange  realisation  of  her 
stillness,  of  figure  as  well  as  of  face.  But  he 
interpreted  her  manner  as  suggestive  of  indiffer- 
ence to  him ;  he  flushed  deeply. 

"  Lady  — "  his  tone  changed  — "  why  don't 
you  tell  me?  I've  asked  before,  and  you  said 
you  couldn't  —  you  said  — " 

"  Perhaps  I  had  better  tell  you  what  little 
there  is  to  tell,"  said  Homfrey.  His  voice  bit. 
"My  wife— " 

Jack  turned  on  him.  "  You !  "  "  What  do 
you  know  about  it.  Lady  told  me  herself  — " 

"  Jack ! " 

It  was  Richarda,  her  face  transformed  from  a 
thing  of  stone  to  living  entreaty ;  she  caught  his 
hands  in  those  clinging  ones  of  hers,  in  which  it 
seemed  as  though  her  heart  were  beating. 

"  Jack !  "  she  said  again. 

There  was  silence  in  the  room. 

And  in  that  silence  Richarda  conquered,  as  she 
had  conquered  before. 

"  Oh  Lady  !  " 

In  the  simple  exclamation  there  was  the  mem- 
235 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

ory  of  all  that  Jack  knew  he  owed  her  —  there 
was  the  recognition  of  all  that  demanded  chival- 
rous sacrifice  of  himself  to  her.  It  was  the  least 
he  could  do.  So  it  seemed  to  his  sensitive  spirit 
in  this  moment  of  emotion  which  he  did  not  un- 
derstand. 

And  the  two  men  on  the  outskirts,  misunder- 
stood in  proportion  to  their  degrees  of  ignorance 
and  knowledge.  To  Homfrey  it  was  simple 
enough.  Richarda  had  intervened,  as  often  be- 
fore, between  him  and  this  boy's  insufferable 
rudeness.  Indifferent  again,  he  turned  back  to 
his  book. 

"  Jack  — "  Richarda's  face  was  still,  her  eyes 
seemed  to  be  watching  the  words  upon  her  lips 
— "  I  will  tell  you  what  you  ought  to  know." 
She  intercepted  his  start  of  surprise  with  a 
quicker  movement  of  words  —  she  counted  on 
his  understanding  her  as  she  went  on.  "  I  did 
not  know  your  mother,  but  she  had  heard  of  me. 
She  had  been  told  that  I  was  kind  — "  Richarda 
smiled  tremulously  — "  And  she  thought  that 
perhaps  I  would  take  you  because  she  had  no 
home  for  you." 

Jack  understood ;  he  was  to  receive  this  story 
as  though  for  the  first  time. 

"  She  had  been  —  very  unhappy,  Jack.  But 
236 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

she  was  ambitious  for  you.  She  wanted  you  to 
have  what  she  thought  was  the  best.  After  I 
took  you,  she  went  away.  I  have  never  heard 
from  her  since.  But  I  had  you,  and  I  have 
tried—" 

"  I  know.  But  —  the  man "  the  boy's 

voice  was  charged  with  uncontrollable  passion ; 
it  was  not  possible  for  him  to  keep  to  the  part 
assigned  to  him.  "  The  man  —  my  father  — " 

Richarda  held  up  her  hand.  "  I  never  asked 
to  know  anything  of  —  him." 

Dawson  breathed  deeply,  but  no  one  noticed 
him.  The  next  moment  he.  was  saying  good- 
night as  casually  as  if  the  evening  had  been  the 
most  uneventful.  Richarda  went  with  him  to 
the  door ;  she  felt  choked  —  she  must  breathe 
the  good,  cold  air  in  the  safe,  still  darkness,  if 
only  for  a  moment.  But  it  seemed  to  her  that 
Dawson  looked  at  her  strangely  as  they  went 
out. 

"  What  is  it?  Is  anything  the  matter  with 
me? "  she  asked  nervously,  and  then  was  ap- 
palled by  the  question. 

"  I  don't  know." 

Dawson  walked  a  block  or  two  without  think- 
ing —  he  was  very  tired.  Then  he  began. 

Why  had  she  kept  silent?  —  he  wrestled  with 
237 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

the  question,  unable  to  compass  a  satisfactory 
answer  to  it,  in  spite  of  his  legal  skill  in  deter- 
mining the  motives  of  men. 

Sooner  or  later  someone  else  must  see  what  he 
had  seen  to-night.  Yet  perhaps  not ;  a  moment 
which  forced  every  hidden  resemblance  to  the  sur- 
face might  not  occur  again  in  a  life-time. 

He  recalled  Homfrey's  youth  —  the  man  to- 
day was  of  another  mould.  He  had  married  on 
an  impulse  of  passion,  yet  all  the  while  coldly 
critical  of  his  condition.  He  had  regarded  the 
girl  he  loved  as  the  victim  of  a  disease  which 
men  and  women  may  not  escape,  but  from  which 
they  may  haply  recover.  On  his  wedding-day 
he  had  written  that  he  thought  it  not  improbable 
that  his  convalescence  might  be  as  fascinating  to 
him  in  its  various  stages,  as  had  been  the  pro- 
gress of  the  disease  towards  crisis. 

Dawson  knew  that  to  state  it  in  terms  of  ut- 
most truth,  Homfrey  had  not  held  himself  bound 
to  render  to  the  woman  he  married  anything  fur- 
ther than  the  great  opportunity  of  experience. 
In  those  days  he  would  have  argued  that  the  more 
of  discipline  they  brought  to  each  other,  the 
larger  their  mutual  obligation. 

So  had  Homfrey  reasoned,  determined  to  state 
the  truth  as  he  thought  he  believed  it,  until  the 
238 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

very  moment  when  he  went  out  to  say  the  words 
which  he  had  characterised  as  the  most  irrational 
by  which  man  ever  perjured  himself. 

But  he  left  out  of  the  case  the  greatest  factor 
in  it  —  the  nature  of  the  woman  he  married. 

"  He  doesn't  know  it  yet,"  argued  Dawson. 
"  He  doesn't  know  that  she  is  the  force  behind 
their  marriage.  He  adores  her  without  knowing 
that  he  does  —  because  she  is  his  wife  —  because 
she  loves  him  —  because,  though  he  doesn't  know 
how,  she  makes  him  love  her.  That  has  been  the 
story  of  their  marriage." 

For  nearly  twenty  years  that  woman  had  held 
her  soul  silent,  defying  her  husband  in  one  thing 
alone ;  in  all  else  seeking  only  his  happiness. 

Why  had  she  kept  silent?  —  Ah,  given  such  a 
woman,  Dawson  saw  clearly  that  there  was  only 
one  answer  to  that  question.  But  he  did  not  un- 
derstand how  that  could  be  —  he  felt  humbly 
that  here  was  a  mystery  beyond  the  comprehen- 
sion of  any  man.  She  had  made  a  great  choice ; 
it  was  not  for  him  ignorantly  to  question  the 
wisdom  of  it.  She  alone  could  understand  her 
reasons  for  the  way  she  had  taken  —  she  knew 
the  man  Homfrey  as  none  other  could. 

He  thought  further  and  further,  until  he  had 
worked  out  a  situation  which  bore  a  close  re- 
239 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

semblance  to  the  real  occurrence.  And  the  longer 
he  thought  about  it,  the  more  he  became  con- 
scious of  the  pressure  upon  himself  of  her  deter- 
mination to  silence  —  what  proof  that  was  of  the 
power  in  this  woman! 

"  Poor  little  girl !  "  he  said  softly.  For  he 
was  a  man  of  deep  emotions  and  romantic  senti- 
ments—  so  deep  and  so  romantic  that  he  jeal- 
ously shielded  one  side  of  his  nature  from  the 
common  eye. 

When  he  reached  home,  he  found  his  wife 
waiting  for  him ;  he  went  over  and  kissed  her. 
But  he  said  —  and  something  in  his  voice  made 
her  look  up  —  used  though  she  was  to  his  im- 
pulsive outbursts :  "  Sarah,  there  is  a  God. 
There  must  be.  But  I  never  thought  so  until  to- 
night. It's  a  great  thing,  isn't  it?  —  the  love 
of  a  woman." 

"  Henry !  "  Mrs.  Dawson's  tone  was  of  mild- 
est astonishment :  "  What  is  the  matter  with 
you?  Aren't  you  well,  dear?  " 


240 


CHAPTER  XIV 

Jack  settled  into  his  senior  year's  work  in  a 
determined  frame  of  mind ;  at  times  he  realised 
moodily  enough,  as  most  seniors  do,  that  the  re- 
sponsibilities of  life  loomed  dangerously  near. 
The  short  term  of  youth's  easy  probation  would 
soon  be  at  an  end;  he  began  to  experience  the 
vague  fears  of  a  man  without  material  equip- 
ment, whose  future  is  dependent  upon  the  most 
intangible  of  possessions.  Yet  he  was  eager  to 
be  free,  to  know  himself  at  last  earning  his  own 
bread,  however  scant  of  butter  it  might  be.  To 
admit  that  he  was  a  dependent  of  Homfrey 
became  each  day  more  galling  to  him ;  the  fiction 
that  it  was  Richarda's  money  that  provided  for 
him  no  longer  availed,  for  as  Maxwell  fre- 
quently stated  in  his  class-room  for  the  tor- 
menting of  unfortunate  "  co-eds,"  a  woman 
was  still  —  all  twaddle  to  the  contrary  not- 
withstanding —  as  completely  a  chattel  of 
her  husband's  as  in  the  days  when  she 
was  frankly  a  matter  of  barter.  She  had  no 
more  right  in  his  income  than  his  dog  had. 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

Marriage  was  in  no  sense  an  affair  of  financial 
partnership ;  one  man  gave  his  wife  an  "  allow- 
ance" and  felt  righteous  —  another  professed  to 
abhor  the  idea  as  imparting  a  commercial  aspect 
to  a  relationship  which  transcended  such  sordid 
details  as  dollars  and  cents,  and  provided  for  his 
wife  sparely  or  lavishly  entirely  as  his  nature  in- 
clined him ;  and  each  believed  himself  generous. 
The  husband  grew  richer  or  poorer ;  was  mas- 
ter or  slave  in  the  world  of  business,  but  the 
wife's  financial  status  remained  the  same.  "  Or," 
—  as  Maxwell  stated  at  the  close  of  a  memorable 
lecture  — "  she  remains  minus  any  status.  And 
why  not?  What  influence  does  the  wife  of  a 
man  who  is  rounding  up,  let  us  say,  a  hundred 
thousand  a  year,  have  in  has  making  of  it  ?  Very 
little,  if  any,  I  answer,  though  I  appreciate  the 
fact  that  it  is  not  popular  to  say  so.  Successful 
men  who  have  been  fortunate  enough  to  make 
what  they  are  pleased  to  call  happy  marriages, 
are  apt  to  humour  their  wives  by  attributing 
their  rise  in  life  to  them.  The  measure  is  a  po- 
litic one,  and  it  costs  nothing.  But  the  gentle- 
men are  not  fooled.  They  know  that  the  woman 
in  the  case  was  entirely  outside  of  it.  A  man's 
success  is  a  matter  of  what  is  within  himself,  and 
what  is  outside  of  him  in  the  way  of  fortuitous 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

circumstance  in  the  business  world.  Given  an 
adventitious  meeting  of  the  one  with  the  other, 
and  no  mere  woman  makes  or  mars.  But  this 
is  a  matter  between  ourselves,  gentlemen.  And 
if  the  ladies  object  to  our  various  methods  of 
supporting  them  — "  he  shrugged  his  shoulders 
amid  the  outburst  that  his  gesture  no  less  than 
his  words  invited. 

Dear,  innocent  Lady !  —  such  thoughts  as 
these  had  never  entered  her  mind ;  she  could  not 
have  dreamed  of  them  in  any  man's.  She  had 
the  serenity  of  profound  faith  in  her  own  dignity 
and  in  her  value  to  Homfrey,  which  was  the 
natural  result  of  the  devotion  to  her  of  a  man 
of  most  critical  discrimination  as  to  women.  She 
was  moreover,  a  woman  of  great  simplicity  and 
sureness  of  taste  in  the  matter  of  her  expendi- 
tures —  Homfrey  had  never  known  the  gall  of 
paying  the  bills  of  a  woman's  folly  and  igno- 
rance. The  question  of  money  never  arose  be- 
tween them,  and  it  had  never  occurred  to  him  to 
think  of  himself  as  supporting  Jack. 

But  Jack  could  hardly  have  been  convinced  of 
that.  It  was  inevitable  that  he  should  judge 
Homfrey  according  to  his  knowledge  of  him  in 
relation  to  himself.  And  Homf rey's  attitude  had 
always  been  one  of  withholding. 
243 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

"  By  the  way,"  said  Maxwell  casually  one 
morning,  "  there's  a  little  talk  about  considering 
you  for  an  instructorship  here  next  year.  Oh, 
it  may  not  come  to  anything  — "  he  took  in  the 
leap  in  Jack's  eyes  — "  but  I  thought  I'd  tell 
you.  Personally,  I  am  opposed  to  the  idea.  I 
should  recommend  you  to  take  a  year  or  so  in 
Berlin  first." 

"  I  couldn't  do  that." 

"  I  see."  Maxwell  knew  something  of  the 
conditions  in  which  Jack  was  placed,  but  he  was 
devoid  of  the  curiosity  which  seeks  informing 
detail.  The  hows  or  whys  of  a  man's  nature  and 
development  did  not  interest  him  —  it  was 
enough  that  he  was  or  was  not  this  or  that, 
without  being  bored  by  the  causes  thereof.  He 
understood  that  there  was  some  sort  of  mystery 
about  the  boy  —  so  much  the  better ;  there  was 
too  little  about  most  students.  After  you  had 
once  seen  their  parents,  they  were  amply  ac- 
counted for.  But  this  rare  bird  —  better  leave 
the  imagination  unfettered  as  to  the  nest  in 
which  he  had  feathered.  It  mattered  nothing 
• —  all  that  did  matter  was  that  it  had  winged 
him. 

"  That  might  be  a  mistake,  of  course  —  not 
to  do  it,"  he  continued  now  with  a  yawn  as  if 
244 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

uninterested.  "  Time  seems  in  a  great  hurry 
when  you're  one-and-twenty.  It  lasts  though, 
longer  than  you'd  think.  If  it's  a  question  of 
the  wherewithal  — "  he  threw  open  the  palms  of 
his  hands  — "  Oh,  a  man's  chest  looks  hollow  if 
he  hasn't  any  pride,  but  he  needn't  make  a  pouter 
pigeon  of  himself.  And  as  for  what  you  would 
need  to  do  Berlin  and  something  more  — "  he 
waved  Jack  away.  "  Good-night  —  Good- 
night." 

The  fact  that  there  hovered  above  his  future 
the  possibility  of  a  position  on  the  staff  certainly 
added  to  Jack's  estimate  of  himself  a  touch  of 
dignity.  The  man  began  to  feel  himself,  which 
was  doubtless  what  Maxwell  desired.  He  was 
not,  as  he  had  said,  interested  in  seeing  the  boy 
in  the  position  so  soon,  for  he  cherished  the  in- 
tention of  making  an  ultimate  position  for  him 
at  Waverley  of  more  immediate  importance  than 
an  instructorship. 

Thus,  to  all  appearances,  the  world  was  going 
very  well  with  Jack.  But  within  himself  the 
boy's  blood  was  in  torment.  He  had  been  too 
apt  a  disciple;  he  had  learnt  too  well  the  trick 
of  doubting  the  sincerity  of  every  motive,  of 
every  emotion.  Yet  at  times  he  grew  heart-sick 
of  his  doubts.  To  amuse  and  interest  him  taxed 
245 


Betty  Carter  to  distraction ;  they  had  long  since 
passed  the  place  where  pretty  speeches  and  poses 
availed.  If  her  influence  was  a  perilous  one  for 
him,  he  was  rapidly  demoralising  what  little  of 
scruple  remained  to  her.  She  understood  that 
he  would  not  marry  her  or  any  girl,  so  long  as 
his  mind  was  imbued  with  his  present  views  on 
the  subject  of  marriage. 

"  Look  at  the  men  on  the  Faculty,"  he  argued, 
'*  who  are  tied  down  with  wives  and  children. 
Their  one  idea  is  how  to  meet  expenses.  And 
what  better  is  the  world  for  their  commonplace 
children?  In  their  souls  they're  all  envying  the 
men  who've  kept  clear,  and  who  can  go  abroad 
every  year,  and  buy  what  books  they  want,  and 
live  the  full  lives  of  men  whose  interests  are  not 
bound  by  four  walls." 

"  I  see,"  said  Betty. 

"  Marriage  doesn't  do  a  thing  for  a  man  ex- 
cept make  him  a  slave." 

"  I  suppose  not,"  said  Betty  ;  and  looked  long 
at  Jack,  until  suddenly  the  colour  flared  in  her 
face. 

"  You're  such  a  good  fellow,  Betty,"  said  Jack 
easily.  "  A  fellow  can  talk  to  you  just  as  he 
thinks." 

"  Yes." 

246 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

But  the  next  night  Betty's  door  did  not  open 
to  Jack's  quick  tap.  He  felt  amused,  and  ran 
lightly  down  the  stairs;  he  would  see  her  to- 
morrow morning  when  they  crossed  the  Campus 
at  eleven. 

But  when  he  said :  "  Oh,  I  have  tickets  for 
the  Comedy  Club  —  I  went  over  to  tell  you  last 
night,  but  you  weren't  there  — "  she  looked  up 
at  him  with  a  distinct  air  of  surprise,  and  said 
sweetly :  "  You  meant  to  take  me?  Oh  — "  she 
paused  —  then :  "  But  I'm  going  with  Mr. 
Hutchinson." 

"  Going  with  Hutchinson  ?  " 

"Yes.     Do  you  mind?" 

He  looked  at  her  a  moment  —  then  made  a 
casual  remark,  and  they  went  their  separate 
ways. 

That  was  the  woman  of  it!  Always  some 
little  game,  some  adroit  juggling,  the  Lord  only 
knew  for  what  end.  He  was  annoyed,  yet 
amused,  and  pleased  with  his  mature  understand- 
ing of  the  ways  of  women. 

Old  Hutch!  —  of  all  the  fellows.  Why, 
Hutch  had  always  dismissed  the  subject  of  Betty 
with  indifference.  She  was  not  his  sort  of  girl 
in  any  way ;  he  was  sure  of  that,  for  he  knew 
Hutch's  soul  as  he  knew  his  own.  During  the 
247 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

last  year  they  had  become  inseparable,  one  tem- 
perament seeming  to  act  as  a  safety-valve  to  the 
other.  Jack  had  spent  several  vacations  in 
Hutchinson's  home,  where  the  mother  received 
him  as  her  son's  friend  with  a  gentle  affection 
which  had  touched  him  deeply. 

Betty  must  leave  old  Hutch  alone. 

What  nonsense!  Hutch  was  amply  able  to 
take  care  of  himself. 

But  Jack  straightway  determined  to  treat 
Betty  to  a  taste  of  discipline  —  he  left  her  alone 
for  a  whole  week.  Which  was  all  that  Betty 
could  have  asked  of  a  kindly  conspiring  Fate. 

Naturally,  as  a  result  of  his  disciplinary  meas- 
ure, he  expected  a  wholesome  regenerating  of 
Betty,  though  he  was  not  sure  just  what  that 
implied.  But  Betty  made  no  reference  to  his 
defection,  when  she  received  him  again;  there 
was  merely  a  touch  of  timidity  in  her  manner, 
new  and  charming.  And  her  simple  little  gown 
appeared  to  match  the  simplicity  of  her  mood ; 
she  was  busy  too,  on  a  tiny  pinafore  — "  for  my 
wee  cousin,"  she  explained  gravely. 

This  was  an  unsuspected  Betty ;  a  Betty  ador- 
able, quaintly  piquante;  the  sort  of  girl  a  man 
married,  were  he  a  marrying  sort  of  man,  and 
afterwards  —  but  Jack  was  tired  of  analysing 
248 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

the  "  afterwards  "  of  life  —  To-night  he,  too, 
felt  in  the  mood  to  be  innocently  happy. 

They  began  by  discussing  the  little  immediate 
things,  but  before  long  they  were  deep  in  a  talk 
that  dealt  intimately  with  their  past  lives  and 
emotions.  Jack  heard  a  great  deal  about  the 
stern,  God-fearing  minister  —  that  simple  man 
loomed  large,  into  proportions  quite  heroic,  un- 
der his  daughter's  deft  picturing  of  him.  The 
little  French  mother  —  Ah,  that  accounted,  no 
doubt  for  some  of  Betty's  baffling  ways !  —  so 
long  dead,  that  Betty  had  only  a  faint  remem- 
brance of  frills,  and  perfume,  and  lisping  lullaby 
• — "  Oh,  you  never  can  understand  — :"  the  big 
brown  eyes  were  far  away  — "  what  it  means  to 
a  girl  to  grow  up  without  her  mother." 

"  Poor  little  Betty !  " 

But  she  smiled.  "  You  must  forgive  me  —  it 
must  seem  so  childish  to  talk  to  you  about  such 
things.  I  never  do  to  anyone,  you  know.  I 
can't  think  what  makes  me  so  —  what  makes  me 
feel  as  I  do  to-night." 

As  for  Jack,  he  felt  himself  bewitched  by 
Betty,  and  it  was  a  delightful  experience;  he 
might  as  well  make  the  most  of  it  while  it  lasted. 
The  charm  of  the  room  with  its  shaded  lamps  — 
Betty  was  rather  given  to  many  lights  but  little 
249 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

illumination  —  had  an  effect  upon  a  man  at 
which  he  had  often  smiled,  but  to-night  it  all 
seemed  appealingly  simple  —  there  were  evident 
none  of  those  pretty  tricks  and  coquetries  of  pre- 
arrangement  which  had  often  irritated  him.  He 
liked  her  as  he  had  never  liked  her  before,  in  that 
simple  little  gown,  with  her  thick  hair  gathered 
low  on  her  neck  under  a  broad  brown  bow. 
There  was  a  fascination  too,  in  watching  her 
sew  —  he  had  never  imagined  Betty  doing  any- 
thing like  that. 

She  was  a  Betty  new  to  him.  Had  he  always 
misunderstood  her  ?  —  was  there  something  here 
for  which  he  had  not  made  allowance?  Had  he, 
perhaps,  man  that  he  was,  with  his  broader  grasp 
of  things  as  they  were,  had  he  been  to  blame 
for  the  intellectual  flippancy  with  which  she  had 
dismissed  from  connection  with  herself  that  seri- 
ous point  of  view  in  regard  to  her  duties  in  life 
which  was,  after  all,  inherently  feminine  and 
desirable?  A  woman  was  made  to  be  wooed  and 
won  at  a  man's  pleasure.  But  that  had  never 
been  Betty's  attitude.  She  had  had  too  much 
admiration.  It  had  led  her  to  forget  that  she 
was  only  a  woman,  with  a  woman's  fate  before 
her. 

Dear  little  Betty  —  she  was  not  to  blame  for 
250 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

that !  From  the  time  she  could  toddle,  there  had 
probably  been  a  boy  on  one  side  of  her,  glaring 
at  the  one  on  the  other. 

The  University  clock  struck  the  hour;  the 
night  was  very  still.  "  Oh !  "  said  Betty  in 
quite  a  frightened  voice.  She  stood  up,  looking 
deliciously  prim  and  straight.  "  You  must  go." 

"  Must !  "  —  and  Jack  sat  deeper  in  his  chair. 

"  Yes  —  yes." 

He  said  nothing;  he  was  looking  at  her;  she 
stooped  and  pulled  a  long  white  thread  from 
the  hem  of  her  gown. 

What  a  curve !     He  sat  up. 

"  Betty,  come  here !  " —  he  laid  his  hand  on  the 
broad  arm  of  his  chair. 

"  There  ?  "  She  hesitated,  embarrassed ;  her 
colour  deepened;  her  eyes  had  the  depths  of 
tears. 

"Come!" 

He  felt  suddenly  elated  —  conscious  master  of 
her  in  this  shrinking  girlishness  which  he  had 
discovered  beneath  the  artifice  and  coquetry 
which  were  her  mask  to  other  men.  He  held  out 
his  hand,  demanding. 

And  she  came,  stepping  slowly ;  she  sat  down 
at  last  on  furthest  edge.  But  that  was  near. 

"  Betty  — "  he  caught  her  hand  in  his  — 
251 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

"  Why  aren't  you  always  as  you've  been  to- 
night? Why  aren't  you  always  as  sweet,  as 
simple  — " 

She  turned  on  him  in  sudden  anger.  "  Oh, 
you  would  have  me  always  as  I  really  am  —  you 
would  have  me  be  myself  to  every  Tom,  Dick 
and  Harry !  You  think  that  a  girl  like  me, 
who  has  to  endure  so  much  that  she  hates  —  you 
think  that  she  has  no  right  to  protect  herself  — 
to  keep  to  herself  what  she  loves  best  in  her- 
self? " 

"Betty ! " 

"Yes  —  Betty!  It's  Betty  here,  and  Betty 
there,  and  Betty  to  everybody  until  I'm  tired  of 
it." 

"  Betty !  "  He  had  both  her  hands  in  his 
now,  but  she  flared  on. 

"  And  to-night  —  to-night  I  felt  more  tired  of 
it  all  than  I  had  ever  felt  before.  I  didn't  know 
you  were  coming  —  I  thought  perhaps  I  should 
be  alone  all  the  long  quiet  evening  —  I  got  into 
this  little  old  gown,  and  I  was  going  to  forget 
—  Oh,  so  many  things  —  I  was  going  to  let 
myself  go  —  I  was  going  to  dream  the  way  a 
girl  loves  to  dream.  Men  don't  understand.  A 
girl—" 

"  Betty !  " —  she  was   in   his   arms   now ;  his 
252 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

breath  came  very  fast  —  and  hers ;  her  lips  were 
near. 

"  You  frighten  me  so !  "  she  whispered. 

"I?  —  frighten  you?  " —  he  kissed  her.  But 
he  had  kissed  her  before  to-night. 

"  Yes.  I  can't  ever  be  real  with  you.  You 
would  laugh  at  that.  I  have  to  pretend.  I 
don't  mind  with  the  others.  But  with  you  — " 

He  silenced  her,  and  for  a  little  while  she  was 
happy.  Then  she  grew  suddenly  afraid. 

"  Oh  Jack,  go  home !     Please  go  home." 

"  Why  should  I  go  home?  " 

"  It's  so  late,"  she  faltered. 

He  stood  up  —  hesitated  for  a  moment  — 
then  sat  down. 

"  Betty ! " 

"  Jack !  " —  her  voice  was  sharp.  "  Don't 
look  at  me  like  that." 

His  own  words  —  upon  her  h'ps  now !  He 
remembered.  But  he  was  past  caring. 

She  began  to  cry  —  a  strange  thing  for  Betty 
to  do.  Confused  thoughts  of  her  father  crept 
through  her  mind ;  she  had  never  loved  him,  but 
in  this  moment  she  had  a  curious  consciousness 
of  his  love  for  her,  and  of  its  presence  about  her, 
cherishing,  protecting. 

"Betty!" 

253 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

She  looked  at  Jack,  and  turned  her  face  away. 
But  he  took  her  hands  in  his  —  he  knelt  beside 
her.  "  Betty,  you  don't  want  me  to  go  away. 
Say  that  you  don't.  I  love  you.  And  you  love 
me." 

"  I  don't  love  you." 

The  boy  laughed,  his  voice  strung  high.  And 
he  kissed  her,  again  and  again,  until  she  cried 
no  more  —  until  she  grew  strangely  sweet,  and 
still,  and  wan  with  fear  of  herself  and  him. 

It  was  a  wonderful  hour  that  followed.  For 
it  was  the  first  —  of  that  sort  —  that  had  come 
to  either  of  them. 

The  night  was  still  the  same  night  —  the 
stars  still  serenely  afloat  in  their  spaces,  when 
Jack  slipped  through  the  streets  to  his  room. 
He  looked  up  into  the  darkness  with  a  sense  of 
embarrassment;  the  eyes  of  Eternity  seemed 
upon  him. 

And  Betty !  —  long  after  they  had  parted  she 
sat  following  the  sound  of  his  footsteps  into  the 
silence.  She  had  a  desperate  longing  to  stay 
time  where  it  was,  that  she  might  keep  her  soul 
true  to  the  experience  of  this  night.  But  the 
bitterness  of  intuition  was  upon  her;  she  under- 
stood that  she  was  never  to  know  again,  in  all  its 
254 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

stinging    sweetness,    the    innocence    of    surren- 
der. 

But  when  the  next  day  came,  she  put  the  in- 
dulgence of  emotion  deliberately  from  her.  For 
she  must  think  —  never  more  straightly  than 
now.  She  knew  that  she  had  reached  the  mo- 
ment when  Jack  would  marry  her  —  if  she 
wished  to  marry  him. 

But  there  was  Hutchinson.  He  had  every- 
thing to  offer  her  —  everything  that,  temporar- 
ily at  least,  she  craved.  He  came  of  one  of  the 
wealthiest  old  families  in  the  state;  he  spent 
money  with  the  indifference  of  the  man  born  to 
it. 

It  was  not  for  Jack  that  the  little  brown  frock 
had  been  donned  —  it  was  for  this  other,  simpler 
man,  who  in  spite  of  asservation  and  belief  to 
the  contrary,  guarded  an  inner  life  of  sentiment, 
delicate  and  fantastic  as  maiden's  dreams.  He 
had  told  Betty,  and  shyly  caught  her  wistful 
look,  that  when  he  was  at  home,  and  knelt  in 
church  beside  his  mother,  the  prayer  that  rose 
to  his  lips  was  always  the  same :  God  send  me  a 
wife  like  mother. 

He  had  all  else  that  he  was  conscious  of  want- 
ing; the  way  of  life  had  been  made  smooth  for 
255 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

him.  But  a  wife  —  little  children  —  over  hopes 
of  these  his  heart  yearned,  demanding. 

He  had  all  that  Betty  knew  she  must  have. 

She  hid  her  face  in  her  hands.  For  she  did 
not  want  Hutchinson  —  she  wanted  Jack. 


256 


CHAPTER  XV 

It  was  six  weeks  later;  the  end  of  the  college 
year  drew  close,  and  Jack  was  a  busy  man ;  he 
emphasized  that  again  to  Betty  to-night. 

"Yes,  of  course  —  we're  all  busy  just  now." 
She  laughed,  but  as  she  saw  that  he  really  meant 
to  go,  she  stiffened.  "  Jack  — " 

"  Well  ?  "  It  was  a  question,  but  curiously 
uninviting  in  tone. 

"  You  remember  —  the  other  night  —  what 
we  talked  about?  " 

"What  was  that?" 

"  Oh,  nothing,  except  that  you  seemed  to  think 
that  perhaps  we  had  better  get  married." 

"I  thought  that?" 

"Yes.     Why  not?" 

"  Why  discuss  that  again,  Betty.  You 
would  be  wasted  on  me." 

"  Wasted  on  you  ?  " 

The  boy's  hands  dropped  wearily  to  his  side. 

"  Must  we  go  all  over  that  again  ?     You  know 

as  well  as  I  do  that  it's  useless.     You  don't  want 

to  marry  me.     You're  just  letting  yourself  fool 

257 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

when  you  pretend  to  think  that  you  do."  He 
laughed  mirthlessly.  "  You're  meant  for  better 
things,  Betty." 

"Ami?     What,  for  instance?" 

He  shrugged  his  shoulders;  then  without  an- 
swer, rose  from  his  chair. 

"  Jack ! " 

'  "  Well  ?  "  he  said  again  in  the  same  tone  as 
before. 

But  this  time  Betty  said  nothing. 

"  I  must  be  off  —  really."  He  did  not  look 
at  her.  "  I'm  due  at  Maxwell's  at  ten.  He 
rowed  me  pretty  well  the  other  night  for  being 
BO  late." 

She  nodded. 

"  I'm  rushed  to  death,"  he  continued  nerv- 
ously. "  There's  the  class  poem  —  I  can't  get 
it  to  come." 

"No?" 

"  I've  never  been  so  stuck  before." 

"How  unfortunate  —  just  now." 

Jack  looked  at  her  —  an  exclamation  rose  to 
his  lips,  but  he  held  it  unuttered,  and  picked  up 
his  hat. 

Betty  did  not  move,  nor  was  there  any  change 
of  expression  in  her  face;  she  stood  apparently 
absorbed  in  her  thoughts,  slowly  pulling  apart 
258 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

the  white  rose  which  still  came  to  her  every  Sat- 
urday night.  But  when  Jack  reached  the  door, 
and  yet  lingered,  she  looked  up. 

"  You  take  a  long  time  going,  don't  you  ?  " 
she  said  in  her  sweet,  full  voice. 

The  color  rushed  into  Jack's  colourless  face. 
"  Yes.  Because  there's  something  I  want  to  say 
to  you.  Don't  you  think  you  had  better  leave 
Hutchinson  alone?  " 

Betty  smiled.  "  Is  that  what  you  came  here 
to-night  for  —  to  say  that  to  me  ?  " 

"  Old  Hutch  isn't  your  sort,  Betty." 

"  Ah !  " —  she  considered.  "  Not  like  you,  for 
instance?  "  She  flashed  a  glance  at  him  which 
was  like  the  stab  of  a  knife. 

"  Like  me  ?  "  He  returned  her  a  look  not 
good  to  see.  But  he  added  quietly  enough: 
"  Me !  —  I'm  anybody's  sort.  Good-night." 

But  a  moment  after  he  had  closed  the  door  it 
opened  again ;  he  looked  in.  "  Betty  — "  he 
paused  in  despair;  she  was  still  standing  there, 
tearing  the  rose  petals  into  tiny  strips ;  there  was 
^something  so  suggestive  in  her  calm  destructive- 
ness  that  he  felt  an  unreasoning  fear  of  her. 
"  Betty,  you'll  remember  what  I  said  about  leav- 
ing Hutchinson  alone."  He  had  a  confused  im- 
pression that  he  was  not  saying  the  wise  thing, 
259 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

but  he  was  suddenly  overwhelmed  with  the  feel- 
ing that  he  must  protect  his  friend,  and  he  fell 
back  inevitably  on  the  masculinely  authoritative 
pose. 

Betty  looked  up.  "  You  want  me  to  leave  Mr. 
Hutchinson  alone?  " — she  laughed  softly.  But 
in  the  next  breath  she  was  another  creature. 
"  How  dare  you  say  that  to  me  —  you !  You 
think  that  because  I  — " 

"  I  don't  think  anything,"  he  protested  help- 
lessly. 

Betty  picked  up  the  little  heap  of  mangled 
petals,  and  let  shred  after  shred  drop  slowly 
through  her  fingers  into  the  waste-basket.  Then 
she  laughed  again  —  because  she  was  so  afraid 
she  might  cry. 

"  Good-night,"  she  said  conclusively.  And 
because  there  seemed  to  be  nothing  else  to  do, 
Jack  went. 

Left  alone,  she  sat  still  for  a  long  time,  the 
tension  of  her  fingers  unrelaxed,  for  the  passion 
she  had  known  for  Jack  died  hard  in  her  blood. 

What  had  happened  ?  —  she  was  trying  to 
understand,  and  not  yet  successfully.  Betty 
was  not  a  poet  —  she  was  a  scientist ;  in  the  mo- 
ment of  most  reckless  self-abandonment  that  she 
was  ever  to  know  —  that  was  past  for  her  now 
260 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

—  her  calculating  finger  had  been  cool  upon  the 
fevered  pulsing  of  her  blood.      She  was  born  with 
the  ability  to  understand   and   manipulate  her 
own  passion,  but  she  did  not  understand  the  boy 
whom  she  had  succeeded  in  making  its  victim. 

"  Six  weeks  ago  what  did  he  care  for  an  en- 
gagement with  Maxwell,  if  I  wanted  him  to 
break  it?  "  she  demanded  of  herself.  But  that 
thought  led  at  last  to  an  outbreak  of  tears,  a 
weakness  rare  to  Betty. 

She  had  a  curious  realisation  of  herself  as  too 
young  yet  to  stand  where  she  stood  to-night,  not 
because  she  valued  her  innocence  as  the  right  of 
her  youth,  but  because  she  appraised  the  loss  of 
it  at  a  value  of  which  she  felt  she  had  been  de- 
frauded through  pitiful  indiscretion. 

The  experience  had  been  too  quickly  quarried 

—  her    satisfaction,    her    revulsion    taken    for 
granted  without  her  leave. 

"  Will  Hutchinson  indeed !  —  he  would  pro- 
tect him  from  me !  " 

She  was  at  heart  a  courtesan,  but  she  resented 
fiercely  the  suggestion  of  herself  as  under  the 
ban  of  men  good  and  true. 

She  had  loved  Jack  disinterestedly  —  she  drew 
herself  up  with  all  the  consciousness  of  virtue  — • 
and  this  was  her  reward ! 
261 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

She  was  not  tired  of  him  —  why  was  he  tired 
of  her? 

There  was  a  knock  at  her  door ;  she  smothered 
her  tears  and  waited.  Another  —  but  she  still 
hesitated.  Then  she  opened  it  to  Hutchinson. 

He  looked  at  her  in  slow  amazement.  "  Why, 
little  girl,  what  is  it?  You've  been  crying. 
What's  the  matter. 

His  eyes  grew  tender  —  his  grasp  of  her  hand 
enfolding,  protective. 

i 

After  Jack  left  Betty,  he  hurried  across  the 
campus ;  he  knew  Maxwell's  contempt  of  him  as 
an  "  unpunctual  cuss."  He  repeated  fretfully 
the  first  few  lines  of  his  task ;  then  listened,  as  in 
other,  happier  times,  for  the  faint  echo  of  some 
strain  phrased  in  the  poet's  own  enchanted 
sphere.  But  that  was  not  for  him  now ;  he  knew 
it;  the  only  sound  that  reached  him  was  the  ir- 
revocable: Depart  from  me:  I  know  you  not. 

Maxwell's  sole  greeting  of  him  when  he  reached 
the  study  was  a  curt  nod,  not  even  mitigated  by 
a  raised  eye-brow.  But  Jack  was  accustomed  to 
such  variety  of  reception  that  he  knew  better 
than  to  interpret  this  as  a  lack  of  welcome;  he 
saw  that  Maxwell  was  writing  furiously,  with  a 
row  of  sharp-pointed  pencils  still  to  the  right  of 
262 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

him ;  he  looked  in  his  blackest  mood.  The  even- 
ing was  warm,  and  he  was  sitting  in  his  shirt 
sleeves,  his  collar  and  tie  on  the  floor  beside  him. 
Bowed  heavily  over  his  desk,  his  eyes  set  sul- 
lenly in  his  swarthy  face,  his  hand  leaping  from 
line  to  line  as  though  driven  by  the  violence  of 
his  thoughts  to  the  utmost  limit  of  speed,  he 
effected  upon  Jack's  mind  an  enduring  represen- 
tation of  himself  as  of  some  mighty  master- 
mechanic,  in  the  act  of  forging  a  link  in  that  im- 
perishable chain  which  binds  a  few  chosen  mor- 
tals in  the  immortal  line  of  succession. 

At  the  extreme  end  of  the  long  room  —  Max- 
well's study  was  the  entire  front  attic  of  a  large 
house  —  there  was  placed  a  chair  beside  a  table 
with  a  shaded  lamp.  Jack  understood.  The 
moods  of  the  master  were  many,  and  sometimes 
unfathomable,  but  he  had  by  this  time  grasped 
the  general  principles  which  governed  them ;  he 
sat  down  submissive  to  the  command  so  clearly 
indicated.  Maxwell  wished  him  there  —  that 
was  evident  and  sufficient. 

He  took  out  his  note-book  and  began  again  at 
his  poem.  He  was  growing  nervous  about  it ; 
the  time  was  so  short,  and  duties  and  engage- 
ments were  harming  him  from  all  sides.  Here, 
under  the  stimulous  of  Maxwell,  clearly  at  high 
263 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

creative  tension,  perhaps  he  would  find  the  inspi- 
ration he  sought. 

But  at  the  end  of  an  hour  he  still  sat  there, 
with  not  one  finished  line  transferred  to  the  star- 
ing page  before  him.  The  visionings  his  insist- 
ence had  evoked  had  been  of  such  character  as 
he  had  not  anticipated,  and  could  not  utilise  in  a 
poem  destined  to  greet  the  ears  of  the  graduating 
"  co-ed  "  and  her  proud  mother. 

He  would  have  laughed  at  the  suggestion  that 
he  was  suffering  the  torments  of  moral  revulsion, 
schooled  as  he  was  to  distrust  the  spiritual  im- 
pulse as  the  subtlest  form  of  self-deception.  His 
depression  was  merely  due  to  the  fact  that  he 
resented  his  contamination  by  ari  experience 
which  he  now  considered  to  have  been  grossly 
inartistic.  Such  was  his  judgment  of  his  case. 
He  was  very  hard  on  Betty;  it  seemed  to  him 
unquestionably  due  to  an  appalling  lack  of  deli- 
cacy in  her  that  their  intimacy  should  have  af- 
fected in  him  this  annoying  sense  of  degradation. 
He  was  aware  that  she  had  known  no  such  re- 
vulsion as  had  weakened  him ;  even  now  —  but 
what  was  the  use  of  threshing  that  all  out  again ! 
So  far  as  he  was  concerned,  the  affair  was  at  an 
end  —  the  mental  "  clean-up  "  he  was  experi- 
encing was  inevitable  and  doubtless  wholesome; 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

he  would  speedily  regain  his  footing  with  a 
sense  of  the  earth  beneath  him  more  sure  than 
before.  For  now  he  understood  —  a  great  many 
things.  Take  the  question  of  marriage  —  a 
man  was  undoubtedly  better  able  to  judge  it  on 
its  merits  after  he  had  realised  some  of  its  most 
compelling  phases,  than  if  he  entered  upon  its 
estate  ignorant.  There  had  actually  been  temp- 
tation for  him  to  marry  Betty,  and  it  was  thus, 
through  a  moment's  emotion,  that  the  unwary, 
men  and  women  alike,  were  tricked  into  the  cage, 
to  find  it  later  barred  from  without  against  their 
escape. 

The  snap  of  the  match  as  Maxwell  lighted 
cigarette  after  cigarette  —  he  seemed  to  devour 
rather  than  smoke  them  —  was  the  only  sound 
that  set  itself  against  the  heavy  silence  of  the 
room,  and  as  the  dense  moments  passed  and  mid- 
night neared,  Jack  grew  helplessly  restless. 
Here  was  no  haven  of  reason,  no  calm  abode  of 
unimpassioned  philosophy !  That  unmoved  man 
yonder  —  through  what  desperate  travail  of  the 
soul  was  the  life  within  him  seeking  immortality ! 
—  the  boy  had  tormented  consciousness  of  a 
tragic  quality  in  the  thick  air  about  him;  un- 
knowing, he  was  heart-sick,  ashamed;  yet  with 
broken  wing  he  was  still  seeking  to  fly,  and  be- 
265 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

wildered,  he  wondered  what  weight  it  was  that 
held  him  fast  to  earth. 

Oh,  this  room  —  the  heat,  the  tumult  of  it ! 
What  black  spirits  of  despair  had  Maxwell's 
mood  evoked  ?  —  he  could  not  stay  here ;  he  must 
get  out,  into  the  free  air,  where  his  brain  would 
clear  and  his  pulses  grow  calm. 

If  only  he  could  stop  worrying  about  Hutch ! 
It  was  senseless ;  Hutch  was  not  at  all  the  sort  of 
man  to  get  entangled  with  Betty.  And  yet  he 
went  to  see  her  of  late  as  he  never  used  to  do, 
and  Betty's  ways  with  a  man  —  his  face  set 
grimly  —  he  must  do  something.  But  had  Betty 
no  right  to  honour  at  his  hands? 

Oh,  he  was  too  weary  of  the  whole  thing  to 
think  it  out  straightly  to-night.  Presently, 
when  he  was  further  away  from  the  experience, 
he  would  know  what  to  do ;  he  would  take  care 
of  Hutch  all  right. 

He  must  think  of  something  else,  and  in  the 
effort  to  do  so,  he  pulled  out  a  letter  he  had  had 
from  Richarda  that  morning ;  it  had  been  in  his 
pocket  unopened  all  day ;  he  read  it  now  without 
interest.  Yet  it  was  a  very  tender  letter.  But 
it  touched  him  nowhere;  Lady  seemed  to  have 
gone  quite  out  of  his  life.  It  occurred  to  him  that 
she  was  the  type  of  woman  who  must  be  neces- 
266 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

sarily  always  on  the  outside  edge  of  a  man's  real 
interests  and  passions.  The  men  she  loved  — 
husband,  son  —  were  fanciful  creations  of  her 
own  thin  imaginings.  The  man  who  loved  her, 
loved  her,  probably,  in  a  way  of  which  she  had 
not  dimmest  perception.  It  was  doubtless  well 
that  it  was  so.  Such  a  woman  floated  above  life,  a 
species  of  semi-detached  angel ;  there  was  unques- 
tionably a  certain  allurement  to  a  man  in  pos- 
sessing and  adjusting  to  his  desires  such  an 
ethereal  self -illusionist.  But  it  was  a  thin,  blue 
stream  that  ran  in  the  veins  of  a  woman  like 
Lady  —  a  man  called  it  blood  by  courtesy. 

It  had  become  a  bitter  grudge  in  his  heart  that 
she  had  refused  to  tell  him  what  he  wanted  to 
know  —  what  he  had  a  right  to  know.  No  prot- 
estations of  her  devotion  to  him  availed  in  the 
face  of  that ;  he  tore  her  letter  into  bits. 

He  turned  to  his  poem  again  —  began  repeat- 
ing doggedly  the  few  halting  lines  he  had  writ- 
ten, as  if  by  force  to  impel  inspiration.  But  in 
spite  of  his  determination,  a  settled  conviction 
of  disqualification  seized  upon  him  —  he  laid 
down  his  pen  and  stared  heavily  before  him. 

What  nonsense !  Logically  reasoned,  the  matter 
was  simplicity  itself  and  called  for  no  retrospec- 
tive sentimentality.     He  must  learn  to  be  a  man 
267 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

in  a  manly  way,  and  not  shrink  whenever  people 
looked  at  him,  with  a  terrified  suspicion  that 
they  understood  —  that  something  imperceptible 
to  him  revealed  a  difference  in  him  to  them,  as 
plainly  as  if  he  were  placarded. 

The  morning  after  —  how  long  ago  that 
seemed !  —  he  had  met  Betty  crossing  the  Cam- 
pus ;  he  remembered  that  he  had  felt  suddenly 
oddly  embarrassed  and  as  he  saw  her  drawing 
steadily  nearer,  he  had  wondered  nervously 
whether  she  would  stop  and  speak  —  she  gen- 
erally did,  unless  they  were  late. 

But  she  skimmed  by,  with  a  gaily  indifferent 
greeting;  she  looked  quite  as  usual.  He  could 
not  understand  that.  It  seemed  to  him  not  nice ; 
he  was  disappointed  in  Betty.  To  be  able  to 
ignore  the  situation  between  them  so  completely 
—  to  have  no  apparent  consciousness  of  that  iso- 
lating experience  which  set  them  apart  from  this 
chattering  mob  of  boys  and  girls  —  No,  he  did 
not  like  that  in  Betty.  She  might  have  given 
some  sign. 

Later,  he  told  her  so.  Betty  laughed. 
"  Fools  all,"  she  purred,  and  appeased  him. 

Betty  laughed  ?  —  it  was  small  wonder.  For 
she  knew  well  that  had  she  betrayed  by  so  much 
as  the  flicker  of  an  eyelash  an  appreciation  of 
268 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

their  new  relation,  this  boy  of  difficult,  fastidious 
taste  would  have  been  severe  in  judgment  of  her 
lack  of  it. 

Betty  began  wisely  enough.  But  she  was 
hampered  by  the  inexperience  of  youth;  and  as 
the  affair  progressed,  she  displayed  at  critical 
moments  an  unfortunate  paucity  of  resource  and 
grace  in  developing  it.  She  got  desperately 
tired  at  times  of  the  demand  upon  her  to  invest 
with  poetical  glamour  an  experience  which  did 
not  seem  to  her  to  lend  itself  easily  to  poetical 
significance.  Betty's  blood  was  frankly  red, 
and  she  was  glad  of  it.  So  was  Jack's,  and  yet 
he  wasted  a  great  deal  of  intensity  in  emotions 
that  were  of  no  value  to  either  of  them.  There 
were  occasions  when  Betty  felt  that  she  had  to 
suffer  some  things  for  which  she  had  not  bar- 
gained. 

But  Jack,  in  his  hardiest  moments  of  intro- 
spection, went  far  beyond  any  reflections  of  Bet- 
ty's. Man  was  man,  and  woman,  woman;  that 
was  all  there  was  to  it.  Yet  each  generation  in 
its  turn,  never  seemed  able  to  accept  that  fact 
without  vast  parade  of  explanatory  excuse  for 
the  condition.  In  reference  to  it,  every  man 
lied  habitually  to  every  other  man,  but  most  to 
himself.  What  was  society  so  damnably  afraid 
269 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

of,  the  boy  asked,  that  it  chose  the  immoral  bond 
of  marriage  —  for  immoral  it  certainly  was  in 
probably  nine  cases  out  of  ten  —  in  preference 
to  the  direct  method  which  would  leave  a  self- 
respecting  man  and  woman  free  of  each  other 
when  they  no  longer  loved? 

Loved  ?  —  he  smiled  with  contempt  for  him- 
self. For  that  was  the  supreme  lie  behind  which 
the  whole  human  show  masqueraded. 

Thus  far  had  the  boy  come  in  his  thinking  — 
it  had  been  clay  swift  to  the  clever  potter's  shap- 
ing. 

"  Ah ! "  With  a  mighty  sigh  Maxwell 
grasped  the  floor  with  his  feet,  and  slowly  rose 
from  his  chair.  He  looked  like  a  gigantic  shad- 
ow of  himself  —  the  black  circles  under  his 
eyes  set  them  back  as  in  caverns ;  he  had  written 
himself  cold. 

"  Hullo  youngster !  "•  —  he  strode  over  to 
Jack.  "  See  that?  "  He  held  up  his  hand — 
it  was  limp,  nerveless,  yet  it  seemed  at  this  mo- 
ment to  have  a  personality  of  its  own  more  ex- 
pressive of  Maxwell  than  his  face,  which  looked 
curiously  inert,  sodden,  as  that  of  a  man  far 
gone  on  the  way  to  drunken  stupor.  He  began 
to  pace  the  room  with  tumbling,  uncertain  steps. 

"  Let's  go  for  a  walk,"  suggested  Jack. 
270 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

Maxwell  stared  at  him.  "  Why  yes,"  he  said 
slowly  — "  A  walk  —  that's  what  I  want. 
That's  why  I  wanted  you  to  come  up.  I  didn't 
want  to  be  alone  —  to-night  —  when  I  got 
through."  He  shivered. 

"  What  a  bundle  of  nerves  you  are,"  said 
Jack  bluntly. 

Maxwell  made  no  reply ;  he  threw  on  his  coat, 
and  without  further  word  they  started,  turning 
towards  the  bridge,  which,  once  crossed,  seemed 
to  set  the  town  far  behind  them.  Before  them, 
the  low  hills  lifted  like  shadows  upon  the  horizon, 
yet  in  this  darkness  they  possessed  a  quality  of 
weird  sentiency  which  Jack  felt  as  never  before: 
Nature  seemed,  as  mistress  of  the  night,  to  re- 
duce the  human  being  to  an  uncanny  insignifi- 
cance in  the  scale  of  creation. 

How  little  anything  mattered  in  the  face  of 
this  vast  uncomprehended  universe,  in  which  the 
human  being  knew  but  a  single  gasp  of  exist- 
ence !  Questions  of  morality  —  of  individual 
conduct  —  of  right  or  wrong  —  how  infinitesi- 
mally  petty  it  all  seemed  compared  with  the  stu- 
pendous workings  of  that  Omnispective  Force, 
across  some  tiny  space  of  whose  boundless  design 
the  human  insect  crawled  to  extinction,  appropri- 
ating to  itself  with  majestic  arrogance  the  su- 
271 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

preme  place  in  creation  —  believing  itself  the 
cause  of  a  universe. 

Himself  and  Betty !  —  there  had  actually 
been  moments  when  he  had  thought  that  that 
mattered!  He  could  have  laughed  aloud,  as  the 
stars  must  laugh,  at  the  great  farce  of  the  hu- 
man struggle  towards  what  men  in  their  blind- 
ness called  righteousness. 

Righteousness !  —  it  was  the  refuge  of  the 
cowards  of  the  race  —  of  men  who  sought  to 
assuage  the  magnificent  hunger  and  thirst  of 
their  natures  with  the  pale  blood  and  attenuated 
body  of  ecclesiastical  dogmatism. 

The  boy  trod  with  sure  step;  he  had  a  sense 
of  elation  good  to  feel  after  his  days  of  depres- 
sion; he  had  proved,  in  the  doing  of  the  for- 
bidden thing,  that  he  had  a  soul  above  bondage. 

They  were  climbing  the  hill  now ;  far  away  to 
the  south,  the  little  town  lay  in  a  hollow  which 
looked  as  if  scooped  just  to  contain  it.  So  still 
was  it  enfolded  by  the  darkness  that  it  seemed 
as  if  it  had  lightly  fallen  into  a  sleep  from  which 
the  day  was  never  again  to  call  it. 

"  What  are  you  thinking  of,  youngster? " 
asked  Maxwell  suddenly. 

"  Oh,  of  that  sentence  —  I've  heard  you  quote 
it:  God,  who  sits  smiling  on  a  mowntain  —  to 
272 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

whom  our  gravest  offences  are  only  as  the  naugh- 
tiness of  puppies  playing  on  the  hearth-rug." 

"  Damned  affectation,"  said  Maxwell  calmly. 
"  I've  no  patience  with  that  type  of  cant." 

"  Oh,  I  don't  know." 

"  Well  then,  you'd  better  know  —  the  sooner 
the  wiser.  Just  get  out  and  do  something 
naughty,  youngster,  and  see  what'll  happen. 
Oh,  I  don't  mean  anything  from  the  outside  — 
just  try  it,  and  you'll  everlastingly  know  what 
I  mean.  You'll  find  yourself  with  yourself  on 
your  hands,  and  you  won't  find  any  comfort  for 
your  soul  in  the  '  puppy '  theory,  let  me  tell 
you." 

"  Yes,  but  you've  said  yourself  — " 

"  What  have  I  said?  "  thundered  Maxwell. 
"  Anything  —  everything  —  it  all  fits  sometime 
or  other.  Sooner  or  later,  anything's  true.  But 
puppies  playing  on  a  hearth-rug !  —  that's  jack- 
ass philosophy,  my  boy  —  unless  you're  puppy, 
which,  inconveniently  just  now,  maybe,  you're 
not.  There  are  quite  apt  to  be  occasions  in  a 
man's  life  when  he'd  like  to  belong  to  a  lower 
order  of  creation  than  he  does.  That's  apt  to  be 
when  the  morals  of  a  dog  are  just  about  his  fit. 
Remember  that.  And  when  you  find  yourself 
getting  down  to  imagining  yourself  a  playful 
273 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

puppy  on  a  hearth-rug — "  he  broke  off  sud- 
denly— :  "Oh,  the  devil!  Don't  talk  like  a 
three-year  old  to  me,  Homfrey.  I'm  in  no  mood 
for  it  to-night." 

They  sat  down  on  a  ledge  of  rock,  which,  jut- 
ting abruptly  from  a  grassy  bank,  made  an  easy 
seat  for  them.  In  the  darkness  below,  the  river 
murmured  past,  seeking  the  waters  of  the  great 
lake ;  they  could  hear  the  poplar  leaves  dance  on 
the  whisper  of  the  wind ;  the  stars  swung  remote 
in  their  appointed  spheres ;  the  sublimity  of 
space,  immeasurable,  unchangeable,  suggested 
an  eternity  of  peace  unstirred  while  kingdoms 
rose  and  fell.  Nature  breathed  only  benediction 
in  this  summer  midnight's  calm ;  the  mighty  pas- 
sions of  humanity  had  no  meaning  here. 

"  In    pretty    deep    with    Betty,    aren't    you, 
youngster  ?  "  asked  Maxwell  after  a  long  silence. 
Jack  felt  as  if  an  electric  shock  had  passed 
through  him.     "  Oh,  I  don't  know." 

"  Don't  think  that  I'm  seeking  information. 
I  merely  happened  to  be  going  along  Warner 
Street  a  couple  of  weeks  or  so  ago  —  seems  to 
me  it  was  about  two  in  the  morning.  You  got 
out  of  there  a  little  ahead  of  me,  and  you  were 
in  a  darned  hurry,  I  observed,  to  obscure  your 
appearance  at  that  particular  spot.  I  wasn't 
274 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

in  a  hurry,  and  I  walked  home  rather  slowly.  I 
found  the  problem  of  co-education  interesting 
even  at  that  uninteresting  hour.  You're  in  a 
position  where  you  can  make  a  study  of  its  ef- 
fects at  first-hand.  A  little  later. I  shouldn't 
wonder  if  your  opinion  mighn't  be  quite  instruc- 
tive." 

Maxwell  spoke  in  a  tone  of  the  most  genial 
indifference,  but  Jack  understood  what  he  was 
getting.  He  made  a  great  effort  to  pull  himself 
together.  "  Miss  Carter  — " 

"  Miss  Carter !  —  Oh  Lord  !  don't  be  a  fool  to 
me,  Homfrey.  You  don't  have  to  be.  I'm 
neither  inquisitive  nor  critical  when  it  comes  to 
the  question  of  a  man's  relations  with  women. 
Because  that  is  a  matter  which  is  often  curiously 
outside  of  the  man's  character  as  a  whole.  But 
with  you  it's  different.  You're  too  young  to  be 
in  any  hurry.  The  women  !  —  they're  ours,  my 
boy  —  the  supply  is  greater  than  the  demand. 
They'll  wait  for  you.  It's  too  early  for  you  to 
get  into  that  game  —  it's  one  that  lasts  a  long 
time.  Betty  Carter — "  but  Maxwell  pulled 
himself  up  short :  "  By  the  way,  it's  settled 
about  Berlin?" 

It  was  hardly  a  question1 — there  was  a  dis- 
tinct accent  of  authority. 
275 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

"  I  suppose  so."  Jack  hesitated ;  then  began 
tentatively :  "  You  don't  know,  Professor  Max- 
well—" 

"  Cut  it  out,"  growled  Maxwell.  He  got  up 
heavily,  with  the  effort  of  an  old  man ;  then  shook 
himself  light,  and  they  began  the  walk  back  at  a 
swinging  pace.  But  half-way  down  the  hill 
he  paused  abruptly. 

"  Do  you  know,  boy,  what's  the  only  thing  in 
this  whole  world  that  a  man  cares  a  damned  cuss 
about?  Do  you  know  what  it  is  that  lies  at  the 
base  of  all  his  thinking  —  all  his  doing?  "  His 
voice  shook;  Jack  had  never  imagined  Maxwell 
like  this.  "  Do  you  know  what  he's  always  seek- 
ing and  never  finding?  Do  you  know  what's 
his  idea  of  Heaven  ?  —God  ?  —  Oh  Hell!  "  The 
exclamation  came  low.  "  My  boy,  men  have 
never  wanted  God  as  they've  wanted  their  mate." 
He  strode  on.  "  The  woman  made  for  him  — 
it's  all  a  man  wants,  and  it's  what  he  never 
gets." 

They  walked  on  in  silence ;  there  was  no  word 
Jack  would  have  dared  utter  if  he  could.  He 
was  bewildered.  That  from  Maxwell!  What 
overwhelming  tribute  to  the  place  in  his  life  of 
the  creature  Woman ! 

Something  that  he  had  been  smothering  stirred 
276 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

once  more  in  Jack's  heart,  faint  and  sweet  as 
the  morning's  first  breath  in  the  darkly  depart- 
ing night. 

But  it  went  as  swiftly  as  it  came,  and  left  him 
conscious  of  a  strange  pain. 

"  Lady  !  " —  the  word  cried  almost  aloud  upon 
his  lips.  For  in  her  stead,  as  the  type  of  all 
women,  he  had  set  this  other ! 

"  '  My  luve  is  like  a  red,  red  rose,'  "  hummed 
Maxwell  under  his  breath.  "  Do  you  smell  it 
somewhere  ?  Ah !  "  He  breathed  deep,  in  an 
abandon  of  enjoyment.  "  It's  the  hour  when  all 
the  flowers  are  sweetest.  There's  only  one  crea- 
ture bad  enough  to  kill,  and  that's  the  human 
being  who  doesn't  love  children,  or  music,  or 
flowers,  lad.  Let  him  be  anathema ! 

"  Yes,"  said  Jack  absently ;  he  did  not  hear. 

"  '  My  love  is  like  a  red,  red  rose,'  "  whistled 
Maxwell  gaily.  The  reaction  from  his  exhaust- 
ing work  was  at  last  fully  upon  him.  "  Sing, 
youngster,  sing !  "  he  commanded. 

But  Jack  was  silent. 


277 


CHAPTER  XVI 

Richarda  laid  down  Jack's  letter  with  an  air 
of  finality ;  then  sat  and  looked  resentfully  at  the 
outside  of  the  envelope.  He  was  going  to  Ber- 
lin, it  appeared  —  as  Professor  Maxwell's  pro- 
tege; a  place  at  Waverley  was  assured  to  him 
upon  his  return.  He  acknowledged  that  he  owed 
all  his  opportunities  in  life  to  her,  and  though 
she  had  done  what  she  had  for  some  reason  which 
he  was  not  to  understand,  that  did  not  affect  the 
measure  of  his  gratitude  to  her. 

It  was  true  that  at  the  end  of  the  letter  he 
abandoned  his  strangely  formal  tone.  Circum- 
stances made  some  things  hard  for  him,  but 
when  it  came  to  the  question  of  his  devotion  to 
Lady :  —  "  You,  better  than  any  one  else,  know 
how  easy  it  is  for  me  to  say  seriously  the  thing 
that  means  nothing  —  then,  Lady  it  means  some- 
thing, that  when  I  think  of  you,  and  all  that  you 
have  been  to  me,  I  can  say  nothing.  It's  all  too 
big  for  me.  I  can  only  know  and  be  silent,  and 
trust  you  to  understand." 

That  was  very  sweet,  but  it  did  not  alter  the 
278 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

fact  that  the  boy  had  hurt  her  by  becoming  man, 
and  that  he  had  served  her  with  notice  that  here- 
after his  way  must  be  of  his  own  taking. 

This  was  her  reward  ! —  a  half-dozen  sentences 
of  courteously  serious  acknowledgment  at  the 
end  of  a  letter  which  seemed  designed  to  indicate 
the  severing  of  the  old  relation  between  them. 

After  all,  perhaps  it  was  the  wise  way.  Jack's 
assumption  of  a  man's  responsibility  for  himself 
was  the  fitting  thing.  She  had  not  sought  re- 
lease from  the  obligation  she  had  taken  upon  her- 
self —  she  had  been,  as  it  were,  honourably  dis- 
charged. She  was  to  be  free  at  last  to  come 
down  from  that  pedestal  on  which  she  had  grown 
so  weary  of  posing;  she  was  to  be  rid  of  the 
tyranny  of  that  ideal  to  which  she  had  bent  her 
burdened  back,  submissive  through  all  these 
dragging  years. 

Certainly,  looking  at  the  matter  from  the 
practical  side,  Jack  had  proved  himself  worthy 
of  all  that  she  had  sought  to  do  for  him.  The 
boy  promised  a  great  future,  and  it  pleased  her 
to  imagine  herself,  when  quite  an  old  lady,  up- 
lifted with  the  consciousness  that  but  for  her  he 
might  have  remained  insignificant.  Of  late  she 
dwelt  more  and  more  in  her  mind,  on  the  fact 
that  it  had  been  demanded  of  her  to  give  oppor- 
279 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

tunity  to  so  brilliant  a  boy ;  she  did  not  perceive 
how  subtly  she  was  thus  eliminating  Homfrey 
from  all  connection  with  him  —  that  she  was 
definitely  seeking  to  efface  from  her  memory  all 
thought  of  him  as  Jack's  father. 

As  matters  stood,  that  was  perhaps  inevitable. 
She  had  suffered  cruelly  for  her  ideals,  but  they 
had  served  their  high  purpose.  It  was  not 
strange  that  after  reading  Jack's  letter  she 
should  feel  as  if  she  had  turned  a  corner  in  her 
life ;  it  had  been  a  long,  dark  lane  through  which 
she  had  come,  but  the  open  highway  to  happiness 
was  at  last  straight  before  her. 

And  Homfrey  would  never  know !  —  yet  she 
had  spent  hours  imagining  scenes  in  which  he 
should  make  accidental  discovery  of  the  facts  in 
Jack's  case,  to  be  followed  by  passionate  declara- 
tions of  his  admiration  and  affection  for  the  wife 
whom  he  had  so  cruelly  misunderstood.  These 
scenes  acted  beautifully  in  her  imagination ;  she 
had  special  seasons  of  such  obsession,  when  she 
unconsciously  assumed  the  airs  and  poses  of  a 
stage  heroine  under  high  dramatic  pressure.  But 
the  next  day,  her  mood  was  apt  to  be  corre- 
spondingly depressed;  yet  she  did  not,  even  in 
her  sanest  moment,  begrudge  her  imagination 
these  flights;  she  had  a  tender  pity  for  the 
woman  who  suffered  in  unyielding  silence. 
280 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

But  that  was  all  over  now.  Another  life  had 
begun  for  her,  embittered  by  no  regrets  for  the 
past,  for  she  could  not  have  done  otherwise  than 
she  had;  time  had  amply  justified  the  attitude 
she  had  taken  towards  an  appalling  experience. 
But  she  had  been  starved  for  happiness  —  the 
happiness  she  had  known  for  two  wonderful 
years.  And  now  it  was  to  be  hers  again,  for 
the  question  at  issue  between  herself  and  Hom- 
frey  had  lapsed,  as  though  exhausted  by  its  own 
weight.  There  had  been  no  ultimate  compro- 
mise —  there  had  been  no  need  of  that. 

Jack  himself  had  freed  her;  she  breathed 
deeply ;  it  was  so  good  to  feel  like  this ! 

But  Jack  —  did  he  think  she  would  forget, 
because  he  was  no  longer  near,  and  dependent 
upon  her  ?  Ah !  —  the  burden  of  him  had  been 
dear  to  her.  She  thought  about  that  until  she 
grew  strangely  troubled.  Was  her  life  hence- 
forth to  be  on  a  lower  plane,  because  it  was  to 
know  no  more  that  hidden  exaltation  of  spirit 
which  had  been  such  mighty  compensation  for 
suffering  ? 

That  was  the  thought  uppermost  in  her  mind 
when  she  wrote  to  Jack  —  a  letter  so  perversely 
sweet  and  strangely  contradictory  that  he  did  not 
understand  it ;  it  only  added  to  his  hu-rt. 
281 


It  was  not  long  before  Homf rey  became  aware 
that  there  was  some  curious  change  in  his  wife; 
it  amused  him  to  think  how  useless  it  would  be 
to  attempt  to  understand  the  nature  or  cause  of 
it.  After  the  first  shock  of  his  early  disillusion- 
ment as  to  the  character  of  her  devotion  to  him, 
he  had  schooled  himself  to  accept  her  as  a  woman 
of  high  and  difficult  ideals,  entitled  to  the  same 
liberty  of  action  that  he  demanded  for  himself. 
But,  as  he  had  once  said  to  Dawson :  "  That's 
a  damned  uncomfortable  theory  for  a  married 
man." 

Dawson  had  promptly  agreed.  "  It's  a  fact, 
Tim,  that  a  man  blunders  into  matrimony  with  a 
lot  of  fool  theories  that  are  only  fit  to  pose  for  a 
bridal  picture  in.  Nature  sees  to  it  that  he  starts 
in  with  a  bogus  outfit  of  ideals  calculated  to  de- 
ceive the  very  elect.  He  doesn't  understand  then, 
that  it  doesn't  eternally  matter  how  many  ideals 
he  and  his  wife  start  out  with,  but  that  it  does 
eternally  matter  how  many  they  have  on  hand 
when  the  time  comes  to  shut  up  shop.  If  they 
have  any,  after  they  have  fought  out  a  life- 
time together  —  well,  haloes  and  harps  for  two, 
please,  and  kindly  step  this  way." 

But  behind  all  his  subterfuges,  Homfrcy  un- 
derstood very  well  that  he  had  married  with  the 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

same  emotions  uppermost  with  which  every  man 
marries ;  otherwise,  he  would  not  have  married. 
It  had  interested  him  to  begin  with  the  avowed 
intention  of  treating  his  marriage  as  a  fascinat- 
ing experiment,  and  he  had  had  no  doubt  as  to 
his  ability  to  maintain  the  double  role  of  partici- 
pant and  spectator.  But  he  had  only  lately  be- 
gun to  suspect  that  this  was  due  in  greater 
measure  to  Richarda  than  he  could  at  one  time 
have  appreciated,  and  that  it  was  owing  possibly 
to  the  potent  presence  in  her  of  certain  qualities 
that  charmed  even  while  they  irritated  him. 

As  Dawson  had  long  ago  said  —  she  had  kept 
him  guessing.  In  her  remotest  moods  there  was 
a  grace  and  distinction  of  caprice  which  ap- 
pealed more  powerfully  to  a  man  of  his  critical 
habit  of  mind,  than  did  her  sweetest  moments  of 
surrender.  In  her  daily  life,  she  was,  moreover, 
devoid  of  that  pettiness  of  insignificant  ill-tem- 
per with  which  many  admirable  women  harry 
their  households,  a  domestic  condition  which 
would  have  been  more  impossible  of  endurance 
to  Homfrey  than  flagrant  sin.  She  had  taken  her 
stand  against  her  husband  on  one  great  issue,  and 
in  that  superlatively  audacious  act  of  the  setting 
of  her  will  contrary  to  his,  she  seemed  to  have 
submerged  those  curious  puerilities  of  feminine 
283 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

thought  and  deed,  which  vex  and  ultimately 
alienate  the  heart  of  man.  Homfrey  never  saw 
her  among  other  women  without  a  sense  of  pride 
in  his  own  good  taste ;  it  was  high  tribute  from 
such  a  man. 

It  was  true  that  at  times  her  many  perfections 
were  a  cause  of  irritation  to  him,  but  that  was 
inevitable  so  long  as  she  failed  to  make  the  great 
surrender,  which  until  lately,  his  attitude  towards 
her  had  never  ceased  silently  to  demand,  yet 
which,  the  contrary  nature  of  man  being  what  it 
is,  he  nevertheless  would  have  felt  it  now  a  der- 
ogation of  her  dignity  as  his  wife  were  she  to 
offer  it. 

Her  point  of  view  remained  as  obscure  to  him 
as  on  the  night  when  she  had  first  told  him  that 
she  meant  to  keep  little  Jack.  Had  she  been  the 
type  of  woman,  who,  devoid  of  humour,  con- 
ceives herself  called  to  the  elimination  of  all  the 
sorrows  of  mankind,  he  could  have  understood. 
But  in  all  these  years,  she  had  made  no  revela- 
tion of  herself  as  of  such  sort;  on  the  contrary, 
she  was  a  person  of  quite  pagan  indifference  to 
those  large  questions  of  the  human  lot  which 
are  settled  on  the  public  platform  with  such  ease 
of  conviction  and  such  generous  appropriation 
of  this  man's  poverty,  and  that  one's  riches. 
284. 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

She  had  never  shown  any  disposition  to  play  the 
part  of  philanthropic  dilettante;  she  gave 
vaguely  to  a  great  many  charities  in  order  to 
escape  importunity;  so,  at  least  she  would  have 
said.  She  went  to  church  because  she  had  been 
brought  up  to  do  so,  but  she  made  no  contact 
between  its  doctrines  and  her  daily  walk  and  con- 
versation. The  church  was  one  of  the  fixed  or- 
naments of  society;  it  did  not  occur  to  her  to 
identify  its  "  dim,  religious  light "  with  the 
clear  and  quenchless  flame  of  the  conscience 
which  lighted  the  way  of  her  soul.  Homfrey 
had  often  thought  when  watching  her,  that  she 
lived  the  life  of  the  disciple  without  the  suste- 
nance of  knowing  it;  it  was  the  price  she  paid 
for  a  heavenly  unconsciousness  of  her  own  grace 
in  common  living. 

Sometimes,  there  came  back  upon  her,  accom- 
panied by  a  sense  of  anguish  yet  undulled,  the 
singing  and  the  prayers  of  those  Salvation  Army 
people  on  the  dock  so  long  ago.  What  had  they 
which  she  had  not?  But  to  that  question,  as  to 
so  many  others,  she  got  no  satisfactory  answer. 

She  was  curiously  tolerant  of  the  opinion  of 
others ;  to  Homfrey  that  was  one  of  the  most 
puzzling  manifestations  of  her  general  complex- 
ity. One  did  not  expect  from  a  woman,  however 
285 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

tutored,  such  sanity  of  judgment,  such  breadth 
of  comprehension,  such  blessed  indifference  to  de- 
batable standards  of  conduct,  as  she  displayed. 

Naturally,  she  seemed  the  type  of  woman  to 
have  cast  herself  with  violence  upon  altruistic  en- 
terprise, and  to  have  worn  herself  out  in  its  ser- 
vice. But  no  !  —  she  had  apparently  exhausted 
all  her  impulses  in  the  direction  of  "  doing 
good,"  upon  that  boy. 

And  there  Homfrey  was  right  —  that  was 
precisely  what  she  had  done.  Through  her  love 
for  him  she  had  been  forced  to  the  highest  ex- 
pression of  devotion  to  him  possible  to  her,  in 
one  definite  act  of  self-assertion ;  and  day  after 
day,  through  long  years,  she  had  had  to  main- 
tain herself  unmoved  upon  that  sacrificial  alti- 
tude. But  the  effort  had  left  her  without  energy 
for  interest  in  those  large  problems  of  human 
destiny  which  to  many  good  women  transcend 
the  more  limited  and  less  fascinating  ones  under 
their  own  roofs. 

Dear  Charda !  —  he  had  long  ago  resigned 
all  hope  of  understanding  her,  but  this  recent, 
bewildering  change  in  her  piqued  his  curiosity 
anew  —  it  was  as  if  a  bud,  long  sheathed  against 
the  storm,  had  broken  wide  into  fragrant  bloom 
at  some  soft  touch  of  the  sun. 
286 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

"  Come  here,  Charda,"  said  Homfrey.  "  I 
want  you." 

He  caught  her  as  she  passed  with  a  saucy  in- 
tention of  eluding  him,  and  drew  her  down  on 
the  broad  arm  of  his  chair;  she  blushed  deli- 
ciously. 

"  I  want  to  know  —  now,  this  moment  —  why 
you're  such  a  wilful  puzzle  of  a  women." 

"But  I'm  not,"  she  protested.  "I  can't 
imagine  why  you  will  think  I  am.  I'm  sim- 
ple to  the  point  of  stupidity.  I  think  that  must 
be  the  trouble.  You're  not  dull  enough  to  ap- 
preciate me,  dear." 

Suppose  now,  once  more,  after  all  the  silence 
of  these  years,  he  asked  her  to  explain !  —  the 
impulse  conquered  his  proud  reserve. 

"  Charda,  tell  me  —  how  could  you  keep  that 
boy  Jack  here  against  my  wish?  I  want  to 
know.  I  have  never  been  able  to  understand 
that." 

She  was  so  close  to  him  —  he  felt  the  shock 
that  went  through  her  —  he  saw  the  hand  in  her 
lap  tighten. 

"  Dear  — "   he   argued,   entreating  —  "  we're 

so  happy  these  days.     But  sometimes,  I  feel  that 

that  still  stands  between  us.    Don't  let  it.    We're 

not  afraid  of  each  other  about  anything.     We 

287 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

can  afford  to  be  perfectly  frank.  My  darl- 
ing— "  it  was  long  since  she  had  seen  him  so 
disturbed  — "  you  would  make  me  a  very  happy 
man  if  you  would  say  what  would  explain  that 
to  me.  It  would  be  the  beginning  of  a  new  life 
for  us  both,  for  you  know,  that  has  always  been 
between  us  —  rankling  in  your  heart  and  in 
mine.  You  must  tell  me,  Charda." 

"  But  things  like  that  are  so  hard  to  explain, 
Tim."  She  looked  at  him  steadily ;  her  eyes  were 
full  of  trouble.  "  Wait  a  moment."  She  slipped 
off  his  chair,  and  went  over  to  the  little  table 
where  her  work  lay ;  she  adjusted  the  light  care- 
fully ;  then  she  sat  down  and  took  up  her  em- 
broidery. "  You're  such  a  critical  man,  Tim. 
Did  you  never  think  how  hard  you  make  it  for 
a  woman  to  be  as  unreasonable  as  it  is  her  nature 
to  be  ?  You  insist  that  her  frivolities  shall  be  in- 
telligent —  you  — " 

"  Frivolities  ?  —  would  you  call  this  a  ques- 
tion of  frivolity?  " 

She  looked  at  him.  "  Of  course  —  my  form 
of  it.  No  woman  exists  who  hasn't  her  own  little 
way  of  being  frivolous.  This  was  mine.  But  I 
amused  myself  by  taking  my  visions  seriously." 

"  Your  visions  ?  " 

"  Yes.  You  know  there's  a  story  in  the  Bible 
288 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

about  Saul  and  what  he  saw  on  the  road  to  Da- 
mascus, wasn't  it?  Well,  it  was  something  like 
that  with  me."  She  laughed  uncertainly.  "  I 
saw  something  on  the  road  to  Damascus  too.  It 
was  all  very  silly,  I  daresay  —  far  too  silly  to 
talk  to  you  about  —  but  you  know,  Saul  believed 
in  his  vision,  and  I  believed  in  mine."  Her  voice 
quivered.  "  And  there's  such  a  lot  of  stubborn- 
ness in  me,  Tim.  I  think  I  would  have  died 
rather  than  give  —  that  child  up  —  after  I  once 
knew  that  no  one  wanted  him  —  not  even  his 
mother." 

"  I  see."  Homfrey  smoked  for  a  while  in  si- 
lence ;  then  he  said :  "  Charda,  did  you  never 
think  that  if  you  were  not  just  the  kind  of 
woman  that  you  are  —  that  perhaps  you  might 
have  driven  a  man  to  think  — " 

She  turned  to  him  with  such  an  expression  in 
her  eyes  that  he  was  forced  to  silence.  "  I  knew 
the  kind  of  woman  that  I  was,"  she  said  proudly ; 
her  face  flamed. 

"Then  you  did  think  I  might  think" — he 
could  not  let  that  question  go  unasked. 

For  a  moment  she  sat  quite  still,  without 
answering  him ;  then  she  broke  into  helpless 
tears. 

He  could  not  bear  that  —  her  tears  were  so 
289 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

rare.     He  took  her  in  his  arms,  and  comforted 
her  as  he  would  have  comforted  a  child. 

"  Poor  silly,  little  girl,"  he  said  tenderly ; 
when  she  was  at  last  quiet,  he  added  as  if  in  con- 
tinuation of  that  exclamation :  "  You're  the  real 
martyr  stuff,  child.  You'd  die  for  any  old  cause, 
so  long  as  you  could  have  the  wretched  joy  of 
dying  for  it." 

"  I  suppose  so,"  she  said  unsteadily. 

She  picked  up  her  work,  and  began  at  it  list- 
lessly, and  he  watched  her,  still  wondering. 

But  her  own  explanation  of  herself  was  the 
only  possible  one  —  she  was  of  the  temperament 
which  travels  the  road  to  Damascus. 

"  Poor  child !  "  he  said  softly. 

After  that  there  was  another  long  silence  until 
Richarda  spoke. 

"  I  had  a  letter  from  Hattie  this  morning.  She 
writes  like  a  woman  possessed.  You  see,  she  has 
a  baby." 

"  A  baby  ?  —  Mrs.  Lewin  ?"  Homf  rey  whis- 
tled. 

"  Yes  —  really."  Richarda  got  up,  in  search 
of  the  letter.  "  I  want  to  read  it  again.  It  was 
awfully  funny." 

"  Read  it  to  me." 

"Oh,  I  can't.     You'd  laugh  too  fearfully. 
I'll  see  what  bits  I  can  let  you  have." 
290 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

Presently  she  read  aloud :  My  dear,  why  didn't 
you  tell  me  long  ago  what  a  lovely  thing  it  is 
to  have  a  baby?  I  never  knew.  You  see  —  it 
happened  like  this.  Do  what  I  would,  I  couldn't 
put  into  Tommy  Lewin  the  spirit  I  wanted  to 
see  in  him.  I  saw  I  had  to  do  something  des- 
perate to  get  him  out  of  the  slough  of  despond 
he  had  got  into. 

But  this  was  as  far  as  Richarda  read  aloud; 
after  that,  Homfrey  got  only  a  stray  sentence 
here  and  there. 

Tommy  Lewin  is  a  very  bright  man,  but  that 
wasn't  going  to  do  us  any  good  unless  he  meant 
to  brace  up  and  hit  the  line  for  all  that  was  in 
him.  I  thought  and  thought,  and  one  day  it 
came  to  me  like  a  flash  from  heaven,  that  there 
was  just  one  thing  that  might  help  poor  Tommy. 
I  felt  like  an  archangel,  and  yet  I  didn't  see  how 
on  earth  we  were  going  to  afford  it.  However  I 
made  up  my  mind  that  if  we  were  going  to  the 
workhouse  anyway,  we  might  as  well  take  a  baby 
there  too,  and'  so  I  let  that  anxiety  go. 

But,  my  dear,  bye  and  bye  I  didn't  know  how 
to  tell  Tommy.  And  I  was  so  happy,  and  I 
thought  if  he  wasn't  happy  too  —  well,  the  end 
of  that  was  that  I  got  so  frightened  that  one  day 
I  just  said,  bang  out: 

291 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

"  Tommy,  we're  going  to  have  a  baby,  and  if 
you  don't  like  it  — "  and  then  I  cried  like  a  fool. 

Men  are  strange  things,  Charda.  I  don't 
think  Tommy  had  ever  given  a  serious  thought 
in  his  life  to  the  possibility  of  his  having  a  baby. 
It  was  so  funny.  But  hasn't  he  been  a  dear  to 
me!  I've  found  out  all  sorts  of  things  about 
Tommy  that  I  never  knew  before. 

Well,  if  I'd  been  happy  before,  I  don't  know 
what  I  was  after  that  —  /  felt  like  singing  in 
the  street.  I  was  working  hard  toot  all  the  time 
—  had  to  —  and  I  had  to  keep  pretending  to 
Tommy  that  I  wasn't. 

Well,  that  baby's  here.  Of  course,  I'd  made 
up  my  mind  that  I  wasn't  going  to  do  anything 
weak-minded  or  silly.  The  whole  thing  was  to 
go  through  according  to  schedule.  But  it  didn't. 
They  thought  I  was  going  to  die,  and  the  worst 
of  it  was,  I  thought  so  too.  That  was  what 
made  me  say  to  Tommy  when  he  came  in  look- 
ing as  if  it  was  my  last  moment  —  you  see,  it's 
natural  to  me  to  keep  a  sharp  eye  on  his  business 
affairs : — 

"  Mind  you,  don't  sign  that  contract,  Tommy, 

until  I'm  well  enough  to  go  over  it  with  you." 

Tommy  rushed  out  of  the  room,  but  the  moment 

I  heard  myself  say  that,  I  knew  all  the  fight  in 

292 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

me  had  come  to  the  top.    I  wasn't  going  to  die, 
and  I  didn't. 

But  that  baby!  —  Char  da,  why  didn't  you 
tell  me?  Why,  my  dear,  a  baby  is  a  necessity. 
Since  she  came,  I  feel  as  if  I  had  been  born  over 
again,  and  born  right  and  fit  to  live.  And  as 
for  Tommy  —  but  Tommy  never  was  anything 
but  the  "very  best.  Only  I  didn't  understand. 

Richarda  read  the  last  few  sentences  aloud ; 
her  face  was  sweet  with  the  sympathy  of  the 
woman  who  knows. 

But  Homfrey  was  perverse.  "  I  wish  that 
baby  had  been  twins,"  he  remarked  drily. 

"  But  so  does  she,"  retorted  Richarda.  "  She 
says  it's  her  one  regret." 


293 


CHAPTER  XVII 

Maxwell  threw  open  his  study  door  and  tossed 
the  book  he  had  been  carrying  towards  a  table 
which  happened  providentially  to  receive  it. 

"  Good  heavens !  I'm  thankful  to-morrow 
ends  the  grind  for  me,  youngster,"  he  ej  aculated, 
as  he  banged  himself  into  a  chair;  Jack  silently 
took  another,  and  they  began  automatically  to 
smoke. 

"  Have  you  heard  Farley's  latest  ?  "  asked 
Maxwell  lazily,  after  they  had  entertained  each 
other  for  a  long  time  without  a  word. 

"  Never  heard  of  Farley.     Who's  he  ?  " 

"  Really.  I'd  better  let  Farley  know  that," 
said  Maxwell  gibing.  "  Well,  he's  the  fellow  who 
will  one  day  be  dean  of  the  engineering  depart- 
ment in  this  university,  let  me  tell  you.  And 
the  Dean  told  me  this  morning  that  Farley  had 
said  to  Mrs.  Hart  in  a  burst  of  confidence  that  he 
hoped  the  day  was  coming  when  the  department 
of  philosophy  would  be  abolished  in  Waverley  — 
what  had  philosophy  to  do  in  fitting  a  man  to 
earn  his  bread  and  butter?  What  do  you  think 
294 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

of  that?  "  Maxwell  shouted  with  laughter.  "  But 
I  have  lots  of  respect  for  Farley,  though  I  ad- 
mit that  he's  a  fine  example  of  the  kind  of  grad- 
uate this  university  is  getting  into  the  habit  of 
turning  out.  The  Dean  said  some  pretty  good 
things  about  the  swamping  of  culture  in  the  col- 
leges owing  to  the  growth  of  the  technological 
idea.  But  in  this  government  of  the  hoodlum 
by  the  hoodlum  and  for  the  hoodlum  — " 

It  was  Jack's  turn  to  laugh;  Maxwell  glow- 
ered at  him ;  then  he  smiled.  "  Naturally,  in  a 
democracy,  the  preponderant  boor  gets  the  up- 
per hand,  but  what  does  it  matter,  after  all  ?  — 
good  government  or  bad  —  it's  all  the  same  in 
the  end.  As  it  was  in  the  beginning,  is  now,  and 
ever  shall  be.  Men  come  and  go  —  they  bless  or 
curse  their  generation  — "  he  shrugged  his  shoul- 
ders —  "  I,  you,  and  the  boor  —  we  come  to- 
gether out  of  the  darkness ;  to-morrow  we  return 
to  it.  It  is  one." 

Jack  was  silent. 

"  What's  making  you  so  ruminative  to- 
night ?  "  asked  Maxwell  presently. 

"  I  didn't  know  I  was,"  said  Jack  lamely. 

Maxwell  muttered  something  and  got  up ;  he 
was  clearly  nervous  and  over-tired.  He  went  to 
the  piano  and  struck  a  few  chords;  then  he 
295 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

swept  his  fingers  over  the  key-board  with  the 
easy  touch  of  the  adept,  and  in  the  next  moment, 
began  to  sing. 

Jack  turned  in  his  chair  —  amazed.  He  had 
never  realised  that  Maxwell  might  be  a  trained 
musician  —  he  had  never  heard  him  strike  a 
note ;  he  had  never  thought  of  him  as  possessed 
of  any  of  the  ornamental  arts. 

And  now  this  singing  —  how  could  a  man 
keep  still  with  such  a  voice  in  his  throat  ?  — 
there  had  been  little  hint  of  this  in  the  snatches 
of  song  Maxwell  was  apt  to  indulge  in,  at  odd 
and  inappropriate  moments. 

Und  das  hat  mit  ihrem  Singen 
Die  Lorelei  gethan! 

Gethan  —  Gethan!  —  the  word  rose  and  fell 
with  the  weird  persistence  of  a  death-knell  toll- 
ing of  closed  eyes,  mute  lips,  folded  hands,  un- 
hasting  feet. 

"  Gee !  "    The  boy  just  breathed  the  word. 

"  Didn't  know  I  could  sing  like  that ! "  Max- 
well glanced  carelessly  at  Jack.  "  Youngster, 
you're  too  sensitive  to  impressions.  Your  tem- 
perament is  set  on  the  bias,  and  it's  going  to  give 
you  a  hell  of  a  time  if  you  don't  look  out." 
296 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

"  But  when  you  sing  like  that  —  why  have 
you  never  — " 

Maxwell  made  a  gesture  of  impatience.  "  I 
can  do  a  dozen  things  like  that,  that  you  know 
nothing  of,"  he  said  almost  contemptuously.  "  I 
was  born  a  gentleman,  thank  God !  —  damn  your 
democracy  !  —  and  trained  like  one,  thank  God ! 
—  and  I  was  early  indoctrinated  into  the  faith 
that  it  is  more  important  to  be  elegant  than  to 
be  useful  —  that's  why  I'm  so  tolerant  of  Far- 
ley —  he's  a  necessary  balance  in  the  scheme  of 
things;  you  can't  have  elegance  at  one  end  of 
the  scale  without  utility  at  the  other." 

"  But  the  song  —  I  never  heard  that  setting 
before." 

"  Probably  not."  A  curious  change  passed 
over  Maxwell's  face ;  his  eyes  grew  tenacious  as 
of  some  object  they  had  gripped  far  back  in 
his  memory.  "  And  you  probably  never  will 
again.  For  the  man  who  wrote  that  music  has 
been  —  dust  — "  his  tongue  lisped  the  word  as 
if  tenderly  — "  this  many  a  year.  That  man 
was  my  best  friend,  and  the  woman  for  whom 
he  wrote  the  song  —  the  woman  who  sang  it  — " 
he  paused;  for  the  moment  he  had  forgotten 
Jack  —  that  was  the  advantage  in  choosing  a 
boy  for  a  friend  —  he  was  a  negligible  condi- 
tion at  will. 

297 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

Then  he  glanced  up.  "  She  was  called  Mar- 
garet —  that  woman." 

Margaret!  —  Jack  could  not  look  at  Max- 
well; he  knew  suddenly  that  he  stood  within  the 
precincts  of  a  man's  soul. 

"  Margaret,"  repeated  Maxwell.  "  There 
was  another  song  she  used  to  sing  —  she  used 
to  sing  it  when  he  sat  there,  listening.  Lad  — 
he  turned  with  sudden  fierceness  upon  Jack — 
"  no  one  loves  and  no  one  hates  as  a  Scotsman 
loves  and  hates.  There  is  no  sentimental  mor- 
bidity about  his  passion  —  that  is  for  your  soft- 
boned  Latin  —  the  Scotsman  loves  as  God  meant 
men  to  love.  And  the  songs  of  Scotland  —  there 
are  none  so  lovely  —  must  be  sung  by  a  Scots- 
woman if  you  would  understand  them.  You've 
never  heard  that  —  what  I  mean  —  you  don't 
know."  He  was  silent  a  moment ;  then  he  added : 
"  Passion  —  Puritan  passion  —  there  is  nothing 
like  it  —  nothing  so  terrible,  so  cruel."  And 
under  his  breath  he  murmured  rather  than  sang : 

I  daurna  think  o'  Jamie, 
For  that  wad  be  a  sin. 

"  Ay,  and  I  heard  her  sing  that  when  —  that 
—  may  God  — !  "  with  a  great  effort  he  held 
himself    silent,    breathing    deep,    his    left    hand 
298 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

clenching  and  unclenching,  his  right  gripping 
the  arm  of  his  chair  —  a  hand  of  unconscious 
steel. 

Then,  with  his  most  characteristic  gesture,  he 
shook  himself  free  of  his  memories ;  he  gave  a 
careless  laugh  as  he  lighted  another  cigarette. 
"  This  is  what  comes  of  singing  The  Lorelei. 
Yes,  I  knew  the  poor  devil  who  wrote  it.  He 
wrecked  himself  over  another  man's  wife  —  ran 
off  with  her  and  died  of  fever  in  Rome  before 
they  had  been  together  ten  days." 

An  abyss  seemed  to  have  opened  at  Jack's 
feet ;  he  was  not  deceived  by  Maxwell's  pose.  A 
question  throbbed  in  his  throat;  he  must  ask  it. 

"The  other  fellow  —  what  did  he  do?" 

"  The  other  fellow  ?  — "  Maxwell  smiled  and 
spread  his  fingers  wide  —  he  was  the  cynic 
again,  the  man  who  laughs  longest  because  he 
weeps  most  —  he  looked  undauntedly  at  Jack. 
He  was  enjoying  himself  now  —  the  moment  of 
bitterness  was  past  once  again,  and  this  time 
not  in  that  horror  of  loneliness  in  which  he  had 
hitherto  suffered  it.  Once  again  he  was  spec- 
tator of  a  tormented  soul  —  his  own  —  felt  tol- 
erance touched  with  contempt  for  that  frailty  of 
man,  which  seeking  to  adore,  set  up  a  golden 
calf  to  worship. 

299 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

"The  other  fellow?"  he  repeated.  "/  was 
the  other  fellow,  youngster.  Great  experience, 
that!" 

Involuntarily  Jack's  eyes  flashed  to  the  book- 
case beside  him.  High  up  he  could  see  it,  that 
volume  of  Unphilosophical  Essays  by  Douglas 
Maxwell  —  he  remembered  the  dedication  on  the 
fly-leaf;  he  could  see  still  the  signature:  Mar- 
garet. 

"  Women  are  hell,"  added  Maxwell  calmly. 
"  Never  forget  that,  Lad.  How  can  they  be 
anything  else,  their  relation  to  men  being  what 
it  is?  We  forget  that,  and  demand  the  impos- 
sible of  them,  and  then  — " 

"  But  — "  interrupted  Jack ;  then  he  hesi- 
tated ;  then  rushed  on.  "  Your  mother  — " 

"  My  mother?  "  Maxwell  drew  himself  up 
—  the  pride  of  family  showed  in  every  line  of 
his  figure. 

At  another  time,  Jack  might  have  smiled,  for 
never  had  Maxwell  been  more  ordinarily  human. 
His  mother !  —  she  was  a  creation  apart. 

But  there  was  no  smile  in  Jack's  eyes ;  those 
simple  words,  my  mother,  were  full  of  ironical 
suggestion  for  him.  His  mother  —  would  he 
ever  know  who  she  was  ?  —  what  blood  was  in 
his  veins? 

300 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

"  We  are  talking  about  the  Dean,  weren't 
we?  "  said  Maxwell  smoothly.  "  You  see  he  was 
really  after  me  this  morning  because  someone 
had  told  him  —  strictly  in  the  interests  of  mor- 
ality —  that  I  had  been  smoking  during  some 
examinations.  I  had.  I  was  bored.  Two  men 
and  a  woman  taking  their  exam,  for  doctor's 
degree  —  an  old  maid  and  two  grinds.  Tobacco 
smoke  couldn't  hurt  them,  and  it  was  the  saving 
of  me.  I  took  the  Dean  up  by  both  horns  and 
left  him  grinning.  He  has  a  valuable  sense  of 
humour,  and  such  an  impersonal  way  of  dealing 
with  people  that  he  keeps  a  nominal  peace  be- 
tween the  warring  factions  in  this  institution 
that's  well  worth  his  salary." 

"  Did  you  ever  see  him  without  his  smile?  " 
asked  Jack. 

"  No.  And  neither  did  his  Maker.  For  his 
smile  was  created  first,  and  all  the  rest  attached 
to  it.  By  the  way,  youngster,  there's  some 
thing  I  want  to  say  to  you  to-night.  You'll  be 
on  your  way  to  Berlin  before  we  know  it,  and 
I  may  never  have  another  opportunity.  Or  per- 
haps, never  again  the  —  but  that  doesn't  mat- 
ter. It  would  be  found  written." 

Jack  stared  at  him ;  a  slight  look  of  impa- 
tience showed  in  Maxwell's  face. 
301 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

"  It's  nothing  —  nothing,  Lad.  Just  that 
my  literary  effects  are  left  to  you  —  along  with 
some  other  trifles.  When  I  have  been  dead  ten 
years,  you  will  publish  my  diary.  You  will  edit 
it.  You  will  understand  some  things  then  that 
are  unintelligible  to  you  now." 

"  I  —  /  —  am  to  do  that?" 

^ 

Maxwell's  hand  slightly  lifted. 

"  Ay,  ay,  Lad.  I  know  what  I'm  about.  To- 
night my  thoughts  are  concerned  with  death  — 
the  great  Destroyer.  Some  day  you  will  read 
in  the  book  what  I  shall  write  when  you  are  gone 
presently.  I've  had  a  letter  to-day  that  blanched 
for  a  little  the  good,  red  blood  in  my  veins.  It 
came  from  my  f ather-after-the-spirit  —  the 
great  master  of  Balliol.  When  I  first  knew  him, 
he  was  just  my  age  —  he  was  full  of  the  splen- 
dour of  life  —  certain  of  achievement.  To-day, 
that  is  all  past,  and  he  faces  — "  there  was  a 
pause ;  then  Maxwell  rose  as  if  he  were  of  the 
weight  of  stone ;  he  crossed  the  room,  and  threw 
open  the  door ;  Jack  understood ;  without  a  word, 
without  so  much  as  a  look  at  his  own  great  mas- 
ter, he  went  out. 

But  as  he  walked  down  the  stairs,  he  heard 
Maxwell's  voice  break  defiantly  into  the  tragic 
memory  of  the  song: 

302 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

I  daurna  think  o'  Jamie, 
For  that  wad  be  a  sin! 

The  boy  plunged,  as  if  pursued,  into  the  dark- 
ness of  a  moonless  summer  night,  and  wandered 
aimlessly  about  the  campus,  feeling  too  uncer- 
tain of  everything  to  be  able  to  think  definitely 
about  anything.  Yet  there  persisted  a  sense 
that  he  must  re-state  his  conceptions  of  himself 
according  to  the  value  Maxwell  clearly  set  upon 
him.  That  he  should  be  chosen  for  such  a  task ! 
• — he  wondered  dizzily  whether  he  had  heard 
Maxwell  aright! 

But  he  had  —  there  was  no  use  doubting  that 
like  a  fool.  That  was  what  Maxwell  thought 
him  worth! 

He  began  to  walk  at  a  fevered  pace  with  no 
consciousness  of  motion ;  his  thoughts  took 
flight  on  the  wings  of  dreams.  Ten  years  from 
now  he  would  be  — 

—  What  would  he  be  ?  —  The  sudden  turn  of 
the  sentence  brought  him  up  short. 

He  had  reached  the  south-east  corner  of  the 
campus,  and  stood  looking  down  the  street  which 
his  steps  had  so  often  sought.  It  was  late,  but 
the  light  glowed  invitingly  in  the  familiar  win- 
dow. 

303 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

With  a  sharp  exclamation  he  turned  and  re- 
traced his  way.  He  was  done  with  all  that  — 
done  with  it.  And  he  did  not  mean  to  think  any 
more  of  the  matter.  Why  should  he?  He  was 
fortunate,  of  course,  for  had  it  not  been  for 
Betty's  ambition  and  coolness  of  head,  he  might 
have  found  himself  involved  in  an  affair  not 
easily  sloughed  off. 

It  had  been  an  ugly  experience,  but  it  was  one 
inevitable,  sooner  or  later,  to  a  man  of  tempera- 
ment. And  he  had  learnt  much  from  it  —  he 
felt  himself  far  removed  from  the  boy  of  eight 
or  ten  weeks  ago. 

He  straightened  his  shoulders,  and  began  to 
walk  fast  again,  breathing  deep ;  the  good  night 
air  was  clean  and  full  of  inspiration.  It  was 
long  since  he  had  felt  like  this ;  he  stood  still  for 
a  moment  and  listened,  as  to  the  incoming  of  the 
tide  upon  the  shore.  And  for  him  at  last  it  was 
coming  in  —  he  knew  it.  The  first  line  of  his 
poem  leapt  to  his  lips  —  he  felt  himself  lifted 
free  of  the  body  which  had  weighted  him  these 
many  weeks ;  there  was  no  need  now  to  entreat 
for  inspiration  which  refused  itself  to  him  —  his 
soul  was  borne  high  upon  it,  as  upon  a  golden 
flood. 

Never  again  was  he  to  know  such  pure  pas- 
304 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

sion  of  the  imagination  obsessed  of  its  powers  as 
he  experienced  in  the  hour  that  followed. 

He  closed  his  note-book  at  last,  and  sat  quite 
still,  alone  on  the  deserted  campus ;  it  was  a 
long  time  before  he  realised  —  with  strange  de- 
tached appreciation  of  it  —  that  he  was  Jack 
Homfrey  and  that  it  was  time  for  him  to  go 
home  to  bed ;  he  was  tired. 

/  daurna  think  o'  Jamie, 
For  that  wad  be  a  sin  I 

—  he  sat  up  straight. 

That  was  what  accounted  for  Maxwell  —  that 
was  the  explanation  of  the  man's  bitterness 
against  all  women. 

It  was  a  cruel  story ;  his  heart  grew  sore  for 
his  master,  as  he  slowly  remembered  it  —  slowly, 
because  the  earlier  part  of  the  night  seemed 
ages  away  from  him.  He  tried  to  imagine  Max- 
well as  he  must  have  been  in  that  "  first  year." 
But  he  could  not. 

"  A  man  never  wants  God  as  he  wants  his 
mate."  There  was  a  terrible  significance  in  the 
words  as  he  understood  them  now ;  they  were  a 
revelation  of  the  meaning  of  human  passion  such 
as  the  boy  had  never  dreamed  of. 

In  Douglas  Maxwell's  life  the  woman  had  oc- 
305 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

cupied  the  supreme  place  —  she  did  so  still.  And 
something  in  the  thought  of  that  shook  Jack 
strangely. 

He  began  to  think  again  confusedly  of  the 
value  Maxwell  placed  upon  him  —  of  the  charge 
that  was  to  be  committed  to  him.  But  he  was 
worthy  of  it  !  —  no  one  need  tell  him  to-night 
that  he  came  of  insignificant  blood.  The  best  of 
some  of  the  best  had  gone  to  his  making  —  he 
was  sure  of  it.  He  pulled  out  his  note-book,  and 
under  the  flickering  gas-lamp  read  again  what 
he  had  written,  with  a  determined  effort  towards 
an  impersonal  impression  of  it;  he  would  read 
it  like  a  critic. 

He  put  the  book  back  in  his  pocket  with  a 
breath  that  was  almost  a  sob.  Well  might  Max- 
well have  faith  in  him;  the  big  professor  had 
all  a  poet's  endowment,  and  had  realised  that 
only  a  poet  could  estimate  a  poet.  But  twenty 
years  from  now  —  thirty  —  would  Maxwell's 
memory  be  assured  beyond  his  day  and  genera- 
tion because  his  name  was  linked  with  that  of  the 
man  who  had  been  his  student? 

The  boy's  blood  galloped  in  his  veins  ;  this  was 

audacity    beyond    anything    that    his    maddest 

dreams   had   conjured.      But   the  wings   of  his 

imagination  had  been  tipped  with  flame  to-night ; 

306 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

he  had  faced  the  sun  unafraid.  With  the  pre- 
science of  genius  he  foresaw  the  destiny  that 
awaited  him,  and  with  the  impatience  of  youth 
he  longed  to  fare  forth  to  grasp  it. 

He  looked  down  at  himself  with  sudden  curi- 
osity ;  at  his  hands,  at  his  feet.  What  flesh  and 
blood  was  this,  so  superbly  differentiated  from 
that  of  its  fellows? 

And  there,  in  that  high  moment  of  self-ap- 
preciation, he  fell  from  immeasurable  heights  in- 
to unfathomable  depths. 

Why  did  a  forgotten  sentence  of  Maxwell's 
never  recalled  since  he  had  listened  to  it  with 
easy  assent  in  the  class-room,  recur  to  him,  un- 
bidden, at  this  time  of  all  others?  —  The  trag- 
edy of  human  existence  is  in  the  gulf  forever 
fixed  between  what  a  man  is,  and  what  he  would 
be. 

Jack  saw  himself  as  he  had  been  for  those 
few,  short  weeks  —  scene  after  scene  rose  scorch- 
ing in  his  memory. 

The  shame  of  it  —  the  hideous  commonness ! 
—  he  sank  upon  the  bench  and  covered  his  face 
with  his  hands.  "  Oh  God !  "  he  moaned,  "  what 
is  it  that  made  me  that  ?"  The  thought  of  Lady 
stabbed  him  —  what  would  she  think  if  she 
knew?  What  did  such  women  think  of  the  men 
307 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

who   betrayed   their    devotion   and   their    faith? 

He  had  learnt  to  jeer  at  law  and  order  in 
life,  but  in  a  flash  of  that  insight  belonging  to 
years  yet  far  beyond  him,  he  saw  it  sweet  and 
wholesome  only  as  it  obeyed  those  mandates 
which  he  had  flouted  as  arbitrary  and  beneath 
the  dignity  of  man  as  free  agent.  They  were 
not  altogether  good,  but  man  had  not  thus  far 
discovered  better. 

Marriage,  a  home,  a  little  child  looking  into 
its  father's  face  —  what  was  there  to  set  as  a 
match  for  these  in  the  realm  of  unlawful  desire, 
of  squandered  passion,  of  brutalising  lust? 

The  boy  could  have  sobbed  out  his  hurt  aloud. 

He  looked  down  at  himself  again  with  horror 
—  disgust.  Who  was  he  anyway  ?  It  seemed 
that  he  belonged  nowhere.  Whoever  his  father 
and  mother  might  have  been,  they  had  had  no 
place  for  him  in  their  lives.  There  could  be 
only  one  reason  for  that,  and  what  bitterness  lay 
in  it  for  him!  But  he  was  in  no  position  to 
criticise  them. 

How  Maxwell  would  sneer  if  he  knew  all  the 
history  of  the  past  weeks !  —  Maxwell,  who  had 
said  to  him :  "  Be  a  gentleman,  youngster,  even 
when  you're  a  beast.  It  always  pays  and  it  can 
be  done." 

308 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

The  university  clock  struck  two  as  he  got  up 
from  the  bench;  he  had  never  felt  so  lonely  in 
his  life ;  he  was  conscious  of  a  feeling  of  moral 
disaster  against  which  he  was  not  strong  enough 
to  stand.  The  great  achievement  of  his  poem 
was  operating  as  a  background  against  which 
he  set  his  life  and  its  deeds  in  glaring  contrast. 

Involuntarily,  his  thoughts  turned  to  Hutch- 
inson ;  there  was  no  tonic  for  his  moods  of  de- 
spair like  "  old  Hutch ;"  he  must  find  him  and 
stay  his  soul  against  his  strength. 

Though  the  most  genial  of  mortals  there  was 
a  definite  exclusiveness  about  Hutchinson  inevi- 
table to  an  individuality  conscious  of  being  suf- 
ficient unto  itself.  His  personal  dignity  was 
well  nigh  a  concrete  substance  to  him;  it  in- 
hered so  naturally  in  the  men  of  his  family  who 
for  generations  had  been  the  backbone  of  a  state, 
that  it  was  evident  in  them  when  they  were  barely 
able  to  toddle ;  they  bumped  their  heads  and  suf- 
fered their  hurts  with  the  pride  of  reserve. 

Yet  there  was  a  nai've  simplicity  about  Hutch- 
inson that  endeared  him  to  his  fellows ;  he  was 
so  unaffected,  so  sincere,  so  tender  of  the  fail- 
ings of  others.  He  looked  at  "  Hefty,"  and 
saw  him  full  of  faults  which  in  Hutchinson 
blood  he  would  have  deemed  almost  criminal.  But 
309 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

Hefty  —  Hefty  was  a  creature  of  genius,  the 
natural  prey  of  erratic  impulses ;  his  indiscre- 
tions undoubtedly  a  source  of  ultimate  wisdom 
not  to  be  apprehended  by  the  ordinarily  prudent. 
Hutchinson  had  a  profound  admiration  for 
Hefty,  who  could  stir  his  slow  blood  as  few 
might  —  though  at  times  he  felt  as  if  he  were 
tied  to  the  tail  of  a  comet  and  whirled  through 
strange  spaces  —  well,  he  was  not  apt  in  his 
life  to  have  too  much  of  such  experience. 

He  was  not  surprised  when  Jack  burst  in 
upon  him  to-night  —  that  had  happened  before, 
much  later  than  this.  He  was  busy  writing,  but 
he  looked  up  with  the  slow,  sweet  smile  his  mother 
loved. 

"  All  right,  old  chap,"  he  said,  and  went  on 
writing.  Jack's  moods,  and  he  knew  them  bet- 
ter than  anyone,  were  many  —  he  would  wait 
to  discover  what  had  brought  him  here  to-night. 

But  the  silence  was  so  long  that  he  looked  up 
at  last,  puzzled.  Silence  was  not  characteristic 
of  Jack  in  any  mood. 

"Well?" 

Jack  sprang  up.  "  My  poem's  done,  Bill.  I 
want  you  to  listen." 

"Done!"  ejaculated  Hutchinson;  he  threw 
himself  back  in  his  easy  chair  and  lighted  his 
310 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

pipe ;  this  was  a  time  for  poised  reflection, 
though  he  had  never  rated  himself  as  a  critic  of 
any  production  of  Hefty's.  Poetry  was  a 
strange  thing  for  a  man  to  wish  to  make  —  in 
the  moments  when  he  was  most  completely  under 
Hefty's  influence,  he  hid  carefully  a  sneaking 
feeling  that  it  was,  after  all,  a  species  of  femi- 
nine fancy  work  which  had  no  real  relation  to 
the  raiment  of  every-day  wear.  And  yet  there 
was  McGillivray  —  where  could  you  find  a  more 
level-headed  chap  than  McGillivray  ?  —  always 
spouting  Robbie  Burns  —  Robbie  Burns  daft, 
in  fact. 

Well,  with  one  man  it  was  automobiles,  and 
with  another,  poetry.  So  be  it ! 

But  this  was  different  —  a  poem  like  this  had 
an  excuse  for  being.  The  time  when  a  man 
graduated  from  college  was  one  to  be  remem- 
bered ever  after  with  a  mixed  array  of  emotions 
—  the  occasion  lent  itself  naturally  to  a  cer- 
tain glorification  of  sentiment,  which  poetry  no 
doubt  was  best  qualified  to  express. 

Hefty  would  do  the  trick  in  great  shape  — 
Hutchinson  had  always  been  confident  of  that, 
even  when  he  had  been  assured  with  violence  that 
this  year  there  would  be  no  class  poem  —  that 
the  man  chosen  to  write  it  could  not  get  beyond 
the  first  line. 

311 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

Hutchinson  smiled  ;  look  at  Hefty  now !  —  he 
was  fit  to  be  in  a  frame.  Of  course  he  could 
write  poems. 

And  then  Jack  began ;  his  voice  was  like  music 
—  Hutchinson  had  never  heard  just  the  note 
that  was  in  it  to-night.  He  listened  with  a  feel- 
ing of  bewilderment  that  grew  as  the  vibrant 
syllables  rose  and  fell.  What  was  this  ?  —  po- 
etry ? 

No ;  it  was  the  ache  in  a  man's  strong  heart, 
there,  moaning  in  your  ears  —  it  was  the  pas- 
sion of  young  love  aflame  upon  lips  of  joy  — 
it  was  light,  it  was  darkness  —  it  was  the  sun 
upon  snow-swept  heights  —  it  was  a  child  cry- 
ing afraid  in  the  dark,  a  woman  singing  low 
lullaby  to  the  babe  at  her  breast.  It  was  the 
splendour  of  the  sun  in  the  west  —  the  mystery 
of  a  daisy  in  the  grass  —  the  whisper  —  No !  — 
it  was  none  of  these.  It  was  — 

Jack  threw  down  his  note-book.  "  Well,  good 
or  bad,  there  it  is,"  he  said  with  strained  indiffer- 
ence. 

But  for  a  moment  Hutchinson  said  nothing; 
his  strong,  steady  face  looked  curiously  inflex- 
ible. 

Then  he  stood  up  slowly,  and  sighed.  "  It's 
quite  a  piece,  Hefty,"  he  remarked,  and  sat  down 
again. 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

Jack  burst  out  laughing.  "  Oh,  you  dear 
old  man ! "  He  fell  upon  Hutchinson,  and 
pommelled  him.  "  Say  it's  great,  Bill.  Say  it's 
the  greatest  thing  you  ever  heard  or  ever  will." 

"  My  Lord,  it  is !  " 

The  tone  was  so  solemn  that  it  lead  to  a  fresh 
explosion  from  Jack.  "  Well,  I  guess  if  it's 
made  that  much  impression  on  you,  it's  a  go." 

"  I  guess  it  is,"  said  Hutchinson,  not  less 
gravely  than  before.  "  Why,  I'm  all  churned 
up.  I  feel  about  the  way  I  did  when  Chicago 
beat  our  team  two  to  nothing."  His  smile  broke 
deliciously  into  his  eyes.  "  Oh  Hefty !  — "  and 
then  he  stopped,  and  turned  to  hunt  out  a  bot- 
tle. 

"  Lord,  what  a  night  I've  had  !  "  exclaimed 
Jack  comfortably  with  his  glass  in  his  hand.  "  I 
began  with  Maxwell,  and  it  seems  to  me  I've 
been  in  heaven  and  hell  alternately  ever  since." 

"  I'd  keep  out  of  hell  all  I  conveniently 
could,"  observed  Hutchinson  genially.  "By  the 
way,  isn't  it  a  stroke  of  luck  for  me  that  Cole's 
resigning  has  left  the  instructorship  open  to 
me?  The  regents  offered  it  to  me  again  to-day." 

"  Great,  old  chap,  great ! "  Jack  wrung 
Hutchinson's  hand. 

"  Why,  next  year,  Hefty,  you'll  be  back  from 
313 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

Berlin,  and  we'll  be  working  here  together.  But 
you'll  be  a  mere  kid  still.  I'll  be  staid  with  mid- 
dle age  in  another  year  —  post-graduate  work 
eats  up  time  like  the  mischief." 

"  Ten  to  one  you'll  be  married  before  I  get 
back,  Hutch.  You're  the  kind  of  man  who 
feels  his  citizenship,  and  the  duties  pertaining 
thereto." 

"Am  I?" 

At  another  time  Jack  might  have  laughed  at 
Hutchinson's  tone,  but  he  felt  suddenly  over- 
whelmed with  weariness  and  in  a  hurry  to  be 
gone. 

"  Oh,  my  note-book ! "  he  exclaimed  as  he 
reached  the  door;  he  turned  back  and  leaned 
across  the  table  for  it  —  inadvertently  he  lifted 
with  it  a  little  volume  on  which  he  had  placed  it. 

"Oh!" 

For,  disclosed  to  view,  there  lay  the  photo- 
graph of  Betty  Carter;  Hutchinson  had  per- 
haps covered  it  as  Jack  broke  unannounced  into 
the  room. 

To  both  men  it  was  a  moment  of  profound 
embarrassment,  though  why  it  should  be  so  to 
the  other,  each  was  at  a  loss  to  understand. 

Then  Jack  turned  towards  the  door  again. 
But  once  there,  he  looked  back.  He  must  speak. 
314 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

"  Oh,  I  say,  Bill !  —  you  won't  mind  — "  he 
paused ;  Hutchinson  was  looking  at  him  stead- 
ily —  "  Say,  old  man,  don't  you  have  anything 
to  do  there,  old  chap.  She's  not  your  sort,  Bill 
—  on  my  soul,  she  isn't." 

"  Betty  — "  Jack's  heart  stood  still  at  the 
tone,  and  at  the  look  in  those  blue  eyes,  serenely 
proud  —  "  Betty  not  my  sort?  —  why,  she's  my 
wife,  Man." 

There  was  a  moment  of  silence;  then  Jack 
stepped  forward.  "  Your  wife,  Bill?  Since 
when?" 

"  Since  three  weeks  ago.  I  know  it  seems 
strange,  Hefty,  that  I  should  do  a  thing  like 
that  —  'tisn't  our  way  —  I  mean  the  way  of  my 
people  —  but  so  many  things  seems  different 
when  a  man  —  when  he  cares  for  a  girl  —  when 
he  knows  he  means  to  make  her  his  wife." —  It 
was  such  a  relief  to  Hutchinson  to  unburden 
himself  —  he  had  never  before  had  a  secret  to 
keep  covered,  and  he  could  hardly  talk  fast 
enough,  now  that  he  was  free  of  it.  "  I  never 
meant  to  do  it  that  way,  Hefty  —  you  wouldn't 
believe  I  could,  would  you  ?  —  but  after  all,  it's 
men  like  me  that  do  just  those  things  that  peo- 
ple would  naturally  expect  of  you,  and  that  you, 
would  never  do.  You  see,  I  found  her  one  night 
315 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

in  such  trouble  —  her  father  needed  money  bad- 
ly —  he'd  got  mixed  up  in  one  of  those  out- 
rageous swindles  that  have  a  trick  of  catching 
the  saints.  It  was  nothing  for  me  to  straighten 
out  —  and  well  —  I  don't  know  just  how  it  hap- 
pened, but  the  more  I  saw  of  —  her,  the  more 
scared  I  got.  There  were  so  many  men  who 
wanted  Betty,  and  she  was  so  worn  out  and  so 
sad,  I  was  afraid  she'd  take  somebody  just  to  be 
taken  care  of  —  the  hard  places  weren't  meant 
for  her,  Hefty.  And  so,  we  got  married  one  aft- 
ernoon over  at  Dighton  —  after  all,  it  was  no- 
body's business  but  our  own,  and  we  couldn't  an- 
nounce it,  because  I'd  lose  my  place  as  instructor, 
and  it  would  make  the  devil  of  a  row  all  round, 
so  we  just  made  up  our  minds  to  keep  it  quiet  un- 
til after  Commencement,  and  until  I'd  been  home 
and  fixed  it  up  with  Mother.  Dear  Mother !  — 
she'll  be  sort  of  taken  off  her  feet  —  I  know 
she's  had  all  sorts  of  dreams  about  the  event 
my  marriage  was  to  be  —  but  when  she  once 
sees  Betty  —  Oh,  Mother  will  understand ! 
Why  Betty  —  no  one  here  knows  what  she 
really  is.  She's  so  brilliant  that  everybody  de- 
manded that  she  should  make  a  sort  of  show- 
piece of  herself,  but  underneath,  Betty  —  why, 
Betty  is — " 

316 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

"  All  right,  old  man,"  said  Jack.  His  face 
was  as  white  as  a  sheet.  "  Good-night." 

Hutchinson  followed  him  out  to  the  stairs. 
But  Jack  did  not  look  back. 


317 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

"  And  so  to  the  class  of  1906  I  say  good- 
bye — "  there  was  a  break ;  then  Maxwell  added 
with  a  smile :  "  And  may  God  have  mercy  on 
your  souls ! " 

The  students  rose  in  a  mass  with  a  roar  of 
applause;  Maxwell  bowed  and  bowed  again; 
through  the  open  window  he  could  see  the  Dean 
crossing  the  campus,  turn  and  look  up,  his  at- 
tention compelled  by  the  tumult. 

"  Maxwell !  Maxwell !  " 

Again  and  again  the  professor  bowed,  then 
at  last  lifted  his  hands  in  deprecatory  gesture. 

To-day  he  stood  at  the  door  and  shook  hands 
with  the  students  as  they  passed  out  for  the  last 
time;  many  of  them  he  would  never  see  again, 
for  Commencement  bored  him,  and  he  was  gen- 
erally absent  upon  that  occasion.  He  was  so 
busy  with  these  farewells  that  Jack  Homf rey  al- 
most escaped  him,  but  he  reached  out  and  held 
him  with  a  touch  on  the  shoulder. 

"  See  here,  Homfrey,  you  didn't  hear  a  word 
of  my  lecture  to-day,  and,  for  you,  I  consider  it 
318 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

the  most  important  of  the  year.  You'll  need  it 
when  you're  listening  to  Paulsen." 

Jack  raised  his  dull  eyes.  "  I'm  not  going 
to  Berlin." 

"  Not  going  to  Berlin?  "  Maxwell  stared  at 
him.  "  What  the  devil  do  you  mean  ?  "  He 
shut  the  door  at  his  right  hand ;  they  were  alone 
now  in  the  ugly,  bare  class-room  with  its  ink- 
pocked  floors,  and  its  rows  of  gaping  seats, 
which,  as  Jack  looked,  made  him  think  of  grin- 
ning skulls  with  empty  sockets. 

"  Now  then !  "  Maxwell  spoke  roughly ;  he 
looked  vicious.  There  was  almost  nothing  for 
which  he  any  longer  cared,  but  this  boy's  future 
had  become  a  matter  of  personal  ambition  to 
him.  Jack  little  dreamed  that  he  was  destined 
eventually  to  be  master  of  the  Stewartry,  that 
great  home  against  which  Maxwell  had  set  his 
heel  on  the  day  when  his  bitter  disaster  had  be- 
fallen him. 

"  Well,  what  is  it  ?  "  He  waited  in  silence 
and  took  note  of  the  bruised  and  beaten  aspect  of 
the  boy  before  him. 

"  I  can't  go,"  muttered  Jack.  "  I'm  not 
worth  it.  If  you  knew  — " 

"  If  I  knew  what,  you  young  ass  ?  " 

"I  —  I  can't  tell  you.  I've  done  the  worst 
319 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

thing  —  I've  —  Jack  stopped ;  he  turned 
his  head  away  and  leaned  heavily  against  the 
door-way. 

"  Hm !  "  Maxwell  was  silent  for  some  mo- 
ments ;  then  he  said  in  a  tone  that  was  ominously 
quiet :  "  Of  course,  it's  the  woman.  A  man  is 
never  such  an  ass  as  you're  showing  yourself  to- 
day unless  it  is.  But  I've  expected  this.  I  knew 
it  had  to  come  sooner  or  later.  Perhaps  it's  just 
as  well  that  it  has,  while  I'm  by  to  set  you 
straight.  But  I  told  you  to  leave  Betty  Carter 
alone.  I  told  you  —  but  that  doesn't  matter 
now.  What  is  it?  Has  she  got  you  fixed  so 
that  you  think  you  must  marry  her  ?  You  aren't 
the  first  drivelling  sot  of  a  boy  that  has  thought 
he'd  got  to  marry  a  girl  and  ruin  his  life  be- 
cause — 

"  I  don't  have  to  marry  her."  The  words 
came  heavily. 

"  Then  what  are  you  making  this  boo-hoo 
about?  Is  your  tender  conscience  seared  be- 
cause —  Oh  Lord,  boy !  haven't  you  learnt  yet 
that  the  world  is  full  of  women  and  why  ?  Damn 
Betty  Carter!  She's  played  some  deuced  clever 
trick  on  you,  you  poor  simpleton ! " 

"  Betty  Carter  requires  nothing  of  me.    Betty 
Carter's  all  —  all  right."     He  must  say  that, 
320 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

for  Betty's  honour  had  become  the  honour  of 
another  —  an  innocent  man. 

"  Then  what  in  thunder  ?  —  where's  your 
poem  ?  Is  it  written  yet  ?  " 

It  was  the  first  time  Maxwell  had  inquired 
about  the  poem ;  it  was  not  his  way  to  encourage 
by  showing  interest  in  a  deed  yet  to  be  accom- 
plished. If  you  were  capable  of  accomplishing 
it,  you  would  —  that  was  all  there  was  to  be 
said;  he  had  no  opinion  of  the  student  who  re- 
quired constant  stimulus. 

Jack  pulled  out  his  note-book;  Maxwell  took 
it  with  an  indifferent  hand. 

He  read  it  twice  —  slowly ;  then  gave  it  back 
to  Jack,  who  had  waited  dully,  not  even  caring 
for  his  opinion. 

Maxwell  looked  at  the  boy. 

"  It's  Keats  —  a  re-incarnation  of  Keats,"  he 
thought.  "  And  a  woman  badgered  and  broke 
him,  damn  her !  " 

"  Try  to  be  sane,  lad,"  he  said  coolly.  "  You 
are  for  some  reason  in  one  of  those  over-heated 
frames  of  mind  when  you  are  apt  to  think  the 
sun  has  fallen  from  the  sky,  because  something 
has  gone  wrong  in  your  own  small  affairs. 
Something  evidently  has  happened,  but  you  can 
magnify  or  ignore  it  as  you  choose.  You  will 
321 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

do  what  you  most  enjoy  doing.  Men  always  do, 
even  though  they  justify  their  cowardice  by 
imagining  themselves  the  victims  of  Fate.  They 
are  merely  the  victims  of  their  own  choice  to  do 
what  they  most  desire. 

"  You've  played  the  fool  clearly  enough.  I 
don't  know  how  —  I  don't  want  to  know.  It's 
all  immaterial.  So  long  as  you  haven't  got  to 
marry  anybody,  or  pay  out  money  you  haven't 
got  — "  Maxwell  smiled  —  "  My  good  fool, 
the  sun  shines  in  its  accustomed  place,  and  all 
is  well.  You've  written  this  poem.  Good 
heavens,  man!  —  what  more  do  you  want?  Do 
you  know  where  I'd  rank  it  ?  —  No ;  and  to-day 
I  won't  tell  you.  You  don't  deserve  it.  Get  out 
into  the  fresh  air,  and  come  to  see  me  to-morrow 
and  talk  sense." 

But  after  that,  Maxwell  stood  still  a  long 
time  and  watched  Jack  cross  the  campus.  What 
had  happened?  He  wished  he  could  know  with- 
out the  discomfort  of  being  told.  He  had  a 
great  fear  of  the  stirring  of  the  depths  of  life ; 
he  had  suffered,  and  demanded  now  that  the  sur- 
face be  calm  at  any  cost. 

But  the  boy  —  he  had  wished  him  to  know,  to 
suffer,  and  yet  a  moment  ago  he  had  denied  to 
him  the  divine  right  of  the  human  being. 
322 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

Ay,  and  so  he  would  again !  Suffering  be 
damned !  Repentance  be  damned !  The  world 
was  not  a  theological  seminary.  He  swung  down 
the  stairs  and  out  upon  the  campus,  thronged 
with  hurrying  students. 

"  Looks  as  if  he  thought  he  had  just  created 
a  universe,"  said  one  of  them  as  he  passed. 

"  He  looks  to  me  like  Satan  on  a  tear,"  re- 
torted another,  and  was  greeted  with  a  shout  of 
appreciation. 

Jack  turned  his  steps  across  the  campus  in 
the  direction  of  the  "  house  " —  he  had  a  dozen 
matters  to  arrange  there,  and  it  seemed  to  him 
that  the  fellows  relied  upon  him  for  every  detail. 
He  was  possessed  of  a  horror  of  meeting  Hutch- 
inson  or  Betty  —  how  was  he  ever  to  get 
through  Commencement  with  its  long  list  of 
"  occasions  "  upon  which  he  and  she  must  both 
figure  as  prominent  participants?  It  struck  him 
drearily  that  he,  too,  was  a  "  show-piece  "  as 
Hutchinson  had  described  her. 

Dinner  at  the  house  that  night  lasted  intol- 
erably ;  the  fellows  were  in  hilarious  mood ;  every 
now  and  then  he  wondered  how  much  longer  he 
would  be  able  to  simulate  the  high  spirits  they 
demanded  of  him  —  they  looked  to  him  to  rise  a 
323 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

notch  above  themselves.  And  all  the  while  his 
nerves  seemed  slipping  —  slipping,  and  the  dull 
ache  which  had  begun  in  his  brain  was  spreading 
to  his  finger-tips,  where  it  became  acute  agony. 
Yet  he  was  singing  loudest,  and  when  "  Peter  " 
Pawle  struck  up  a  waltz  on  the  piano,  he  seized 
"  Oats  "  as  Donald  Scott  was  dubbed  —  the 
brawniest  man  in  the  fraternity  —  and  whirled 
him  about  in  a  mad  riot  of  missteps  in  which 
those  huge,  untutored  feet  were  a  joy  to  the 
jeering  spectators. 

"  Faster  —  faster !  "  cried  Hefty,  and  then 
with  a  dexterous  turn  he  sent  "  Oats  "  spinning, 
while  he  performed  a  pas  seul  of  such  inimit- 
ably uncouth  grace,  that  some  of  the  men  felt 
solemnly  that  the  stage  would  never  be  what  it 
might  until  Hefty  adorned  it. 

He  sank  at  last  breathless  upon  the  floor,  and 
they  gathered  about  him  shouting :  "  Speech ! 
Speech !  "  And  lying  there  prone,  his  head  pil- 
lowed on  "  Short "  Cutler's  knee,  Hefty  broke 
his  own  record  for  brilliance  in  the  half-hour 
that  followed.  Anecdote  and  epigram  crackled 
upon  his  lips ;  the  wheels  in  his  head  were  all 
whirling  now  at  the  uttermost  limit  of  speed  — 
they  felt  as  if  they  might  at  any  moment  fly  off 
into  space,  and  go  on  revolving  there  forever 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

at  a  madder  and  a  madder  rate.  What  odds  so 
long  as  the  fellows  laughed !  What  a  great  old 
howl  was  that  of  Hank's !  But  that  pesky  little 
cackle  of  Blister's  —  well,  what  you  could  ex- 
pect of  an  inflated  little  bubble  like  Blister,  any- 
way? 

It  was  near  midnight  when  he  left  the  house ; 
it  had  not  been  easy  to  get  away  alone.  But  he 
must  have  quiet.  He  must  walk  —  walk  hard 
and  get  this  tumult  in  his  brain  stilled.  The 
thing  was  not  to  think,  but  just  to  walk  and 
enjoy  the  night.  He  was  a  poet.  He  could  see 
beauty  in  the  darkness  which  another  might 
miss.  Maxwell  thought  he  was  a  poet.  He  must 
remember  that. 

Remember  what?  What  had  he  just  been 
thinking  about? 

But  he  was  not  going  to  think  —  he  remem- 
bered that. 

Yet  suddenly,  he  stood  still  in  the  white  dusty 
road.  Hutchmson! 

"  Oh  Hutch !  "     It  was  a  groan. 

What  must  he  do?  Must  he  go  and  tell 
Hutch? 

No ;  he  could  never  tell  him  that  now.  Better 
let  him  remain  happy  and  ignorant. 

Then  a  lie  was  better  than  the  truth  —  in 
325 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

such    a    case?     Would    Hutchinson    think    so? 

What  cruelty,  what  disloyalty  to  his  friend! 
—  Let  old  Hutch  with  his  high  ideals,  his  un- 
stained traditions,  come  by  the  children  who 
would  bear  his  name  and  perpetuate  his  family 
through  such  a  woman  as  —  as  Betty  Carter  ? 
The  idea  of  the  family  and  what  he  owed  to  it 
was  so  strong  in  Hutch  —  he  never  forgot  the 
generations  of  right  living  and  pure  blood  that 
had  produced  him  and  given  him  such  fair  start 
in  the  world.  His  brains  and  his  brawn  were 
clean,  and  he  had  thanked  God  therefor,  with 
none  of  the  Pharisee's  arrogance,  but  with  a 
deep  and  humble  sense  of  the  duty  and  privilege 
which  such  heritage  entailed. 

To  think  that  he,  Hefty,  should  be  the  cause 
of  such  hurt  as  this  to  Hutch !  It  was  unendur- 
able —  he  hated  the  pain  of  it.  Whatever  he 
did  now  would  work  irreparable  cruelty  to 
Hutch.  What  was  the  use  of  Maxwell's  saying 
it  was  all  the  same  in  the  end  ?  —  right  or 
wrong,  heaven  or  hell,  fire  or  water.  What  a 
lie!  It  was  eternally  different.  What  a  lie  to 
argue  that  it  mattered  nothing  whether  the  wife 
of  Hutchinson  were  a  woman  pure  or  impure; 
whether  he  knew  it  or  not ;  whether  his  children 
inherited  good  blood  or  bad ! 
326 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

Still,  somebody's  children  had  to  inherit  evil. 
Why  not  old  Hutch's  as  well  as  another's  ?  And 
he  had  chosen  to  accept  Betty  Carter  at  her  face 
value ;  giant  in  moral  strength  that  he  was,  he 
had  let  himself  be  beguiled  like  a  weakling. 
That  was  surely  his  own  affair. 

Jack  lighted  a  cigar,  and  walked  on  at  a 
sharp  pace.  No  man  could  be  held  responsible 
for  the  blindness  of  another.  He  had  never  been 
fool  enough  to  want  to  marry  Betty  —  it  had 
remained  for  level-headed  old  Hutch  to  make 
that  break. 

His  entanglement  with  Betty  was  his  own  af- 
fair —  and  hers.  There  was  no  chance  of  its 
ever  becoming  known  to  Hutch  —  Betty  was  too 
clever  for  that.  Of  course  he  could  not  now  re- 
turn to  Waverley ;  Betty  would  have  a  clear 
field,  and  could  be  trusted  to  fill  with  brilliance 
her  ultimate  position  as  wife  of  a  professor. 

Could  she?  Was  it  in  her  to  accept  so  pro- 
saic a  role? 

Perhaps  not ;  but  no  one  could  safeguard  a 
man  against  the  disposition  of  his  wife.  Hutch- 
inson,  like  others,  must  take  the  chances  of  his 
choice. 

What  a  night !  Jack  looked  up  at  the  stars 
and  felt  almost  at  peace  with  the  world.  It  was 
327 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

a  great  relief  after  the  furnace  of  affliction  he 
had  been  in  for  twenty-four  hours.  He  began 
to  sing  "  Still  wie  die  Nacht " —  the  song 
matched  the  night  and  his  mood;  a  sense  of  the 
impregnable  beauty  of  the  world  stole  soothing- 
ly upon  him.  He  sat  down  by  the  road-side, 
and  eased  his  back  against  the  trunk  of  a  great 
tree  —  he  was  deadly  tired;  he  had  not  slept 
since  —  but  he  was  not  going  to  think  of  that 
again. 

The  night  air,  sweet  with  summer  scents,  blew 
lightly  upon  him ;  bye  and  bye  he  slept. 

He  awoke  with  a  start,  and  looked  about  him, 
bewildered.  There !  —  a  moment  ago  he  had 
seen  them, —  Hutch's  little  children  —  a  row  of 
them  with  curly  heads,  adorable,  dimpled  things. 
But  they  had  turned  from  him,  their  innocent 
eyes  wet  with  tears  —  tears  that  looked  as 
strange,  as  terrible  as  drops  of  blood  upon  a 
flower. 

"  Oh  God !  "  he  cried.     And  lay  still. 

What  did  it  matter?  —  it  mattered  all  of 
heaven  and  all  of  hell.  It  mattered  and  en- 
dured to  the  last  limit  of  eternity. 

At  last  he  understood;  he  knew  that  he  was 
not  again  to  escape  his  own  conscience. 

Richarda's  work  had  come  to  judgment;  she 
328 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

had  pleaded  that  she  might  see  of  the  travail  of 
her  soul  and  be  satisfied,  but  she  had  not  meant 
this;  it  would  have  seemed  to  her  an  answer  of 
stone  to  her  cry  for  bread  —  but  nevertheless, 
in  this  high  moment  her  plea  was  granted. 

"  I  must  —  I  must,"  moaned  Jack.  "  I  must 
tell  him." 

The  piercing  scream  of  a  whistle  and  the 
broken  jolting  of  arrested  wheels  made  a  pause 
in  his  wretchedness.  He  stood  up  and  looked 
about  him  —  at  the  grass  heavy  with  dew  on 
which  he  had  been  lying  all  night.  It  was  the 
beginning  of  another  day ;  the  trees  were  throw- 
ing off  their  purple  shadows,  and  the  birds  were 
whispering  to  the  fledglings  in  their  nests ;  in 
the  east  it  was  as  if  the  veil  of  heaven  were  rent 
upon  some  scene  before  the  throne. 

But  Jack  was  taking  note  of  none  of  these 
things ;  he  was  thinking  with  great  difficulty, 
that  he  must  be  near  a  station  —  perhaps  it  was 
Dighton ;  he  could  see  the  big  freight  train  now. 
It  seemed  to  stretch  from  one  end  of  the  little 
town  to  the  other. 

A  mighty  longing  to  see  Lady  swept  over 
him;  he  forgot  the  gulf  that  had  sprung  be- 
tween them  —  he  remembered  only  her  tender- 
329 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

ness,  all  of  a  mother's  that  he  had  known.  He 
was  aching  so  strangely  —  the  beat  in  his  head 
was  maddening.  If  he  could  only  lie  for  so 
little  a  while  on  that  bed  in  the  cool,  white 
room  where  he  had  dreamed  his  boyish  dreams 
—  if  he  could  only  hear  the  light  step  of  Lady 
as  he  had  so  often  heard  it,  and  feel  the  touch 
of  her  soft  hand  !  —  for  his  head  was  so  hot  — 
there  were  burning  spots  in  his  eyes. 

He  seemed  to  be  walking  —  there,  to  that 
train,  which  somehow,  was  so  far  away  —  and 
then,  presently,  he  gave  somebody  a  dollar.  And 
after  that,  he  lay  still  for  a  long  time  on  the 
floor  of  the  caboose. 

It  was  nine  o'clock  when  the  long  line  of 
freight  cars  dragged  slowly  into  the  big  sta- 
tion ;  he  staggered  across  the  tracks  and  then  on 
to  the  platform.  Nine  o'clock  —  he  must  wait 
an  hour  —  until  Homf rey  was  safe  in  his  office 
down-town.  Homfrey  must  never  see  him  like 
this.  He  knew  now  that  he  was  ill  —  as  he  hud- 
dled in  a  corner  of  the  waiting-room,  he  shivered 
with  a  great  fear  —  the  fear  that  before  all 
these  strange  people  he  would  suddenly  begin 
to  cry,  "  Lady  !  Lady  !  "  For  the  thought  of 
her  was  all  that  he  was  clinging  to  now;  she 
stood  between  him  and  a  horror  of  blackness 
330 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

from    which    he    shrank    like    a    terrified    child. 

He  began  to  repeat  what  he  must  do  to  reach 
her  —  he  was  so  afraid  he  would  forget.  He 
must  take  the  street-car  —  what  a  curious  word ! 
—  who  had  invented  it  ?  But  what  was  a  street- 
car? Oh  yes,  he  remembered  now. 

He  must  take  the  car  to  Chauncey  Street,  and 
get  out  there.  Get  out  there?  Why  must  he 
get  out  there? 

But  that  was  where  you  always  got  out  —  he 
was  sure  of  that.  And  then  you  walked  — 
walked  — 

He  must  have  done  that,  for  after  an  eter- 
nity of  time  he  felt  his  fingers  close  on  some- 
thing—  his  heart  gave  a  great  throb,  for  he 
knew  it  was  the  handle  of  the  front  door  at 
Number  Seventy-nine. 

He  went  in  through  the  vestibule,  and  into 
the  big,  cool  hall  —  the  sun  had  been  so  hot  out- 
side, and  yet  he  was  so  cold. 

And  then  he  looked  up,  and  there  coming 
down  the  stair-case,  was  Lady,  in  a  soft  white 
gown,  with  a  bunch  of  yellow  roses  in  her  hand. 

"  Lady ! "  he  cried  with  a  terrible  sob  — 
"  Lady,  I  want  you." 


331 


CHAPTER  XIX 

When  Homfrey  came  home  that  evening, 
Richarda  hurried  to  meet  him;  he  kissed  her 
tenderly ;  the  hours  that  separated  them  seemed 
long  to  both  now-a-days. 

"  Well !  anything  momentous  occurred  since 
I  left  this  morning  ?  "  he  asked  teasingly . 

"  Yes."  Richarda's  tone  was  so  grave  that 
he  dropped  back  a  step  on  the  stairs  to  look  at 
her. 

"  Dick  ?  " —  the  note  in  his  own  voice  was 
sharply  apprehensive. 

"  No."  She  hesitated.  "  It's  Jack,  Tim.  He 
came  home  ill  this  morning.  Dr.  Hall  has  been 
here  twice  already.  He  is  delirious." 

"  Hm !  Too  bad.  I  hope  you're  not  wearing 
yourself  out." 

"  No.     The  nurse  has  been  here  since  three." 

"  You'll   need    two.      I    suppose    you've    ar- 
ranged for  that.    Because,  of  course  you  under- 
stand,   Richarda  — : '    but    Homfrey    went    up- 
stairs without  finishing  the  sentence. 
332 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

That  boy  once  more !  There  were  hospitals 
at  Waverley  —  the  very  best.  Why  was  he 
here? 

And  there  was  Richarda  with  that  look  in  her 
eyes  again  —  the  look  that  boy  had  always  been 
able  to  inspire ! 

They  sat  through  a  wretched  dinner-time  — 
Homfrey  silent,  while  Dick  and  his  mother  made 
desultory  remarks  concerned  with  their  anxiety 
about  Jack  —  the  boy  seemed  not  able  to  leave 
the  subject  alone. 

"  You  remember  —  we  have  tickets  for  '  Ro- 
meo and  Juliet '  to-night,"  said  Homfrey  as 
they  left  the  dining-room. 

"  Oh,  send  them  to  the  Butlers',  or  get  Mr. 
Dawson  to  go  with  you."  And  Richarda  hur- 
ried away. 

He  had  not  thought  that  she  would  go;  his 
remark  had  been  intended  to  suggest  certain 
things  to  her  which  she  was  in  danger  of  over- 
looking. It  was  not  her  son  who  was  ill. 

He  sought  Dawson,  and  between  the  acts 
he  unburdened  himself  of  this  new  grievance. 

"  Haven't  you  anything  to  say  ?  "  he  asked 

when  Dawson  remained  silent.     "  You  know  this 

is  the  one  thing  I  can't  stand.      And  here  I'd 

been     congratulating     myself     that     we     were 

333 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

through  with  it.  Perhaps  I'm  irrational.  Every 
man  is  about  something.  You  are." 

"  Oh  Lord,  yes  ! "  And  then  Dawson  was 
silent  again.  It  was  not  until  the  end  of  the 
next  act  that  he  said :  "  Leave  your  wife  alone, 
Tim.  It's  all  you  can  do." 

"  Well,  it's  what  I  don't  mean  to  do,"  re- 
marked Homfrey  irritably. 

Dawson  looked  at  him.  "  Let's  go  home,"  he 
said  crossly.  "  This  babes-in-the-wood  play 
makes  me  sick.  Tisn't  in  it  with  the  real  trage- 
dies of  life." 

The  week  went  by ;  Homfrey  saw  less  and  less 
of  Richarda;  there  came  a  day  when  she  was 
neither  at  breakfast  nor  at  dinner.  But  late  in 
the  evening  as  he  was  sitting  alone  in  the  libra- 
ry, he  heard  her  foot  on  the  stairs;  he  waited, 
but  as  she  did  not  come  in,  he  went  out  to  look 
for  her.  She  was  sitting  on  the  lowest  step 
with  her  face  in  her  hands. 

"  Charda !  "  He  drew  her  into  the  library, 
and  would  have  put  her  into  a  chair,  but  she 
stood  firm. 

"Charda,     tell     me!  — what    is     it?"      The 
sight  of  her  white  face,  grown  thin  in  these  few 
days,  stirred  him  to  tenderness. 
334 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

She  looked  at  him  without  speaking ;  then  put 
her  hands  together  in  a  gesture  that  affected 
him  as  strangely  pathetic. 

"  You  see,  Dr.  Hall  thinks  he  will  die.  I 
know  he  does,"  she  said  in  a  breathless  voice. 
"  And  I  have  been  cruel  to  him." 

"  You  —  cruel  to  that  boy?  " 

She  held  up  her  hand  —  she  silenced  him. 

"  Yes  —  cruel.  And  now  I  can  never  make 
it  right.  It  is  all  done.  And  I  have  failed.  I 
deserted  him  when  — '  her  tone  changed ;  she 
began  to  speak  rapidly,  vehemently : — "  I 
wanted  to  forget  him  —  I  wanted  just  you  and 
Dick  —  and  now  — " 

"  Charda,  be  reasonable !  You  are  com- 
pletely exhausted.  You  are  in  no  condition  to 
judge  - 

"I  —  I  never  was  so  well  able  to  judge  some 
things.  I  never  saw  so  clearly  — " 

There  was  a  sound ;  they  both  turned  to  see 
the  nurse  standing  at  the  door. 

"  Mrs.  Homfrey,  I  cannot  quiet  him.  He 
calls  for  you  all  the  time." 

She  said  that  and  hurried  away.  But  Hom- 
frey laid  an  arresting  hand  on  his  wife's  arm. 

"  Oh,  I  must  go,"  she  protested  miserably. 
"  He  needs  me,  Tim." 

335 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

"  But  perhaps  I  need  you."  He  still  held 
her. 

"  Ah,  but  just  now,  he  comes  first."  There 
were  tears  in  her  eyes. 

"  I  don't  see  why." 

"No.  I  think  —  just  now  —  I  wish  you 
did." 

Homfrey  looked  at  her  steadily,  his  eyes 
slowly  filling  with  bitterness.  "  And  7  think  — 
damn  the  — " 

"  Tim !  "  She  sprang  towards  him,  the  tears 
raining  over  her  face.  But  in  an  instant,  they 
were  checked,  and  such  storm  of  passion  as  he 
had  never  dreamed  possible  to  her  showed  in  the 
gesture  with  which  she  turned  from  him,  and  in 
the  next  instant,  confronted  him. 

"  You  would  damn  that  boy  ?  " —  her  voice 
was  so  low  that  he  barely  heard  — "  and  that 
boy  —  that  boy  — "  she  stopped  suddenly,  then 
added :  "  That  boy  —  is  my  Jack." 

From  Homfrey's  point  of  view,  she  could  have 
said  nothing  more  offensive  to  him;  it  was  evi- 
dent that  she  was  still  determined  to  elevate  to 
a  position  of  paramount  importance  a  difference 
of  opinion  which  he  had  felt  willing  to  ignore 
for  the  sake  of  the  complete  harmony  which  of 
late  had  become  possible  to  them. 
336 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

An  hour  or  two  later  he  went  up-stairs,  and 
passed  the  room  where  Jack  lay;  he  heard  a 
moan,  and  then  Richarda's  voice: 

"  Sleep,  my  Saviour,  sleep, 
On  Thy  bed  of  hay  — " 

—  over  and  over  again,  the  single  verse,  for 
when  she  ceased,  the  moaning  began.  It  was 
the  little  hymn  with  which  she  had  often  sung 
him  into  dreams  in  bygone  days ;  the  spell  still 
held ;  when  he  heard  it,  even  in  delirium,  he  be- 
came as  a  little  child  again. 

Her  voice  wavered  —  ceased ;  in  the  instant, 
the  door  opened,  and  she  stood  beside  Homfrey. 
She  took  no  notice  of  him  —  she  was  going  to 
her  own  room,  but  when  she  reached  the  couch 
that  stood  in  this  square  upper  hall,  she  sank 
upon  it  —  she  could  go  no  farther. 

Homfrey's  impulse  was  to  leave  her  alone  — 
but  he  looked  back.  No,  he  must  go  to  her. 

"  Charda ! " 

She  sat  up  and  looked  at  him  as  if  she  hardly 
saw  him.  "  I  can't  —  I  can't  sing  any  more," 
she  said  in  a  dull  voice.  "  And  I  must  —  I  must 
sing  all  night,  perhaps.  And  I  don't  know  how 
to.  I've  sung  all  day."  She  sprang  up. 
"  There !  —  do  you  hear  him?  I  must  go." 
337 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

He  held  her.  "  Char  da,  do  you  know  that 
you  are  so  exhausted  that  you  are  hysterical?  I 
forbid  you  — " 

"  Oh  Tim !  —  you  forbid  me?  " 

He  let  her  go.  Poor,  pitiful  child,  with  her 
visions  and  ecstasies !  Yet  perhaps,  better  these 
than  some  other  delusions. 

When  he  saw  her  again,  he  inquired  as  to 
Jack's  welfare;  she  replied  briefly  that  he  was 
improving,  but  day  after  day  passed  and  she 
still  remained  as  devoted  to  the  boy  as  she  had 
been  when  his  case  was  most  critical.  Homfrey 
felt  himself  so  deeply  injured,  that  he  took 
refuge  upon  a  very  high  level  of  thought ;  this 
was  Richarda's  peculiar  obsession,  and  he  would 
treat  it  without  prejudice.  But  being  merely 
human,  his  nobility  of  intention  manifested  it- 
self in  such  a  withdrawing  of  himself  from  her, 
that  Richarda  felt  that  her  burden  was  once 
more  greater  than  she  could  bear. 

Commencement  Day  was  over;  the  month  of 
June  was  going  out  with  the  roses  that  had 
come  in  with  it  as  buds.  Richarda  had  had  to 
answer  many  inquiries  as  to  Jack's  condition; 
she  had  been  deeply  touched  by  a  little  inter- 
view with  Hutchinson,  whose  frank  pleasure  in 
her  instant  remembrance  of  him  had  seemed  to 
her  refreshingly  boyish  and  sincere. 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

"You  see,  we  all  think  so  much  of  Hefty, 
and  we're  so  proud  of  him,"  he  said  shyly,  "  But 
I  guess  —  I  guess  Hefty  means  a  little  more  to 
me  than  he  does  to  any  of  the  others.  And 
there  are  some  things  about  him  that  I  under- 
stand better  than  anybody  else  does.  He  was 
so  strange  that  last  time  he  came  to  see  me  —  I 
knew  something  was  the  matter  —  I  was  badly 
bothered  about  him.  Somehow,  I  never  thought 
of  his  being  ill." 

When  later,  she  told  him  over  the  long  dis- 
tance telephone  that  Jack  was  out  of  danger, 
he  answered  that  he  was  just  leaving  Waverley 
for  his  home,  but  that  he  would  be  sure  to  see 
Hefty  before  he  went  to  Berlin,  if  indeed,  he 
was  able  to  do  that  at  all  this  summer. 

She  had  wondered  much  at  Professor  Max- 
well's silence  until  Hutchinson  told  her  that  he 
was  delivering  a  course  of  lectures  on  the  Pa- 
cific coast,  but  that  he  was  to  return  to  Waver- 
ley in  time  for  the  opening  of  the  Summer 
School ;  Hutchinson  was  keeping  him  advised  as 
to  Jack's  condition,  but  the  letter-writing  habit 
was  not  one  of  Maxwell's  vices,  and  with  the  ex- 
ception of  several  telegrams  of  anxious  inquiry, 
he  had  heard  nothing  from  him. 


339 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

It  was  a  lovely  July  morning;  Jack  sat  for 
the  first  time  by  the  open  window,  pillowed  care- 
fully in  the  easiest  of  chairs.  But  there  was  no 
light  in  the  eyes  with  which  he  looked  out  upon 
the  great  bed  of  poppies,  flame-red  in  the  sun- 
shine; his  ears  were  not  open  to  the  sweet  note 
of  the  birds,  a-wing  with  luscious  morsels  for 
wishful  throats.  Richarda  sat  beside  him;  she 
was  sewing  listlessly,  or  not  at  all,  for  her  mind 
was  not  on  her  work ;  she  was  waiting  in  the 
hope  that  Jack  would  speak  to  her  —  that  she 
would  at  last  understand  what  was  the  pass  to 
which  this  boy  had  come. 

She  waited  until  she  could  bear  waiting  no 
more  —  the  set  look  of  despair,  the  hopelessness 
of  the  drooping  figure  filled  her  with  a  fear 
which  she  felt  at  last  she  must  acknowledge  — 
she  must  speak  if  he  would  not. 

"  Jack  " —  she  leaned  over  — "  Tell  me  what 
it  is.  I  must  know." 

He  looked  at  her  —  a  great  wave  of  colour 
spread  over  his  white  face. 

"Why  —  what  makes  you  think  — "  he  could 
say  no  more. 

"  Jack  —  how  could  I  help  knowing  some- 
thing? You  were  delirious — you  said — "  but 
now  she  paused. 

340 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

Fire  and  water,  right  and  wrong,  heaven  and 
hell  —  how  he  had  cried  that  out,  over  and  over, 
and  then  the  refrain :  "  It's  all  the  same  in  the 
end,  Lady,  all  the  same  in  the  end." 

For  he  had  always  seemed  to  be  conscious  of 
her,  even  when  he  had  said  things  she  knew  he 
could  not  have  chosen  her  to  hear. 

Maxwell!  Maxwell!  —  and  then,  so  often 
some  jest  from  which  she  shrank. 

"  Betty!  —  Oh,  leave  me  alone,  Betty."  She 
learnt  to  dread  that,  because  of  the  agony  of 
the  cry  which  always  followed :  "  Hutch,  dear 
old  Hutch,  what  have  I  done?  " 

"  I  was  delirious  ?  —  you  mean  — "  Jack's 
hands  were  trembling  now. 

"Jack  —  can't  you  trust  me?  Perhaps,  if  I 
knew  just  what  the  trouble  is,  I  might  help." 

He  was  silent. 

But  she  was  determined;  she  spoke  very  gen- 
tly —  "  There  seems  to  have  been  a  Betty.  Was 
that  the  girl  I  saw  once?  Is  it  anything  about 
her?  " 

"  Lady,  I  can't  tell  you."  He  looked  pit- 
eously  at  her. 

"  But  you  must.  For  something's  wrong. 
And  if  I  don't  know  what  it  is,  how  can  we  set 
it  straight?" 

341 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

"  There  are  some  things  that  can't  be  set 
straight,  Lady." 

"  Are  there?  I  don't  believe  it,"  she  said  with 
a  great  show  of  confidence. 

"  Yes.  Because  sometimes,  nothing  that  you 
would  do  would  be  right.  And  this  time  I've 
hurt  old  Hutch,  and  the  hurt  can  never  be  set 
straight." 

"  Mr.  Hutchinson  ?  But  he's  so  fond  of  you, 
Jack.  How  could  you  hurt  him?  Don't  you 
understand  that  you've  been  ill,  and  perhaps 
you're  imagining  all  sorts  of  things.  Why,  Mr. 
Hutchinson  wants  to  see  you." 

"  That's  because  he  doesn't  know.  When  he 
does  — " 

Richarda  was  suddenly  afraid ;  they  both  sat 
silent  for  some  time. 

Then  she  said  tremblingly :  "  Tell  me  the 
truth.  Is  it  anything  very  bad,  Jack?  I  must 
know." 

"  It  is  very  bad,  Lady." 

She  was  silent  again ;  she  felt  stricken  as  by 
a  blow.  She  understood  now  that  there  was 
something  before  her  to  be  borne;  for  a  little 
while  she  flinched. 

Then   she   said  —  her  voice  was   very,   light : 
"  Jack,  have  you  not  been  a  good  boy  ?  " 
342 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

He  understood  that,  to  Lady,  that  question 
had  but  one  meaning. 

The  tears  came  into  his  eyes  —  he  could  not 
keep  them  back.  "  No,  Lady,  I  have  not  been 
a  good  boy." 

"  Jack !  " —  it  was  a  moan.  This  then  was 
the  measure  meted  out  to  her  in  return  for  her 
effort  to  atone !  This  was  the  reward  offered  to 
her  by  the  life  she  had  undertaken  to  redeem,  to 
render  so  noble  that  it  should  be  its  own  excuse 
for  being,  and  not  a  reproach  to  the  one  re- 
sponsible for  it. 

"  I  shall  have  to  go  away,"  said  Jack  in  a 
voice  that  faltered.  "  I  mustn't  stay  here.  Be- 
cause —  you  don't  know  — "  he  realised  that 
what  she  thought  he  had  done  seemed  to  her  the 
worst  that  a  man  could  do.  "  You  see,  Lady  — 
that  is  not  all.  That  is  the  least  part  of  it." 

"The  least  part  of  it?" 

"  Yes.     When  you  know  it  all  — " 

She  sat  quite  still  now,  looking  down  at  her 
hands.  She  was  groping  in  the  dark  among 
her  fears ;  she  felt  like  a  common  coward.  She 
wished  herself  the  weakest  of  women,  that  she 
might  take  refuge  behind  the  weakness  that  was, 
a  woman's  natural  defence.  But  she  knew  her- 
self strong.  That  was  the  misery  of  it. 
343 


She  had  failed,  and  Homfrey  would  know 
it!  A  few  tears  ran  down  her  face  untouched; 
Jack  saw  them ;  he  closed  his  eyes ;  he  felt  faint 
again. 

But  when  he  opened  them  she  was  looking  at 
him,  and  her  wet  face  had  upon  it  the  sheen  of 
divine  tenderness. 

"  Jack,  I  will  help  you  to  tell  me.  Because  I 
must  know  it  all  —  everything.  You  are  my 
boy.  I  will  not  forget  that." 

Through  long  years  the  gospel  of  renuncia- 
tion had  been  her  law  of  life ;  she  understood  its 
every  letter.  For  a  little  while,  she  had  dis- 
owned it,  but  obedience  to  it  was  at  root  second 
nature  to  her. 

"It  was  that  Betty,  wasn't  it,  Jack?" — she 
spoke  rapidly  now ;  the  way  was  clear  to  her ;  she 
saw  what  she  must  do.  "  You  —  you  were  not 
good  about  her,  Jack?  That  is  so  strange — " 
her  breath  caught  in  her  throat :  "  I  can't  un- 
derstand that,  Jack,  but  men  are  so  —  so  — " 
the  look  in  her  sweet  eyes  blinded  him  — "  and 
then  —  then  —  but  how  could  that  hurt  Mr. 
Hutchinson?  Did  he  love  her?  " 

"  Yes." 

"  Oh  Jack !    I  can't  believe  that  of  you.    You 
knew  that  he  loved  her  — '* 
344 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

"No  Lady.    I  didn't." 

She  gave  a  sigh  of  relief;  her  lips  were 
trembling. 

And  as  Jack  looked  at  her,  a  vast  contempt 
for  himself  arose  in  him.  He  was  such  a  cow- 
ard that  he  had  not  the  grit  to  tell  her  of  his 
disgrace  straightly ;  he  was  letting  her  bear  the 
burden  of  this  confession. 

He  sat  up ;  his  thin  face  hardened.  "I  made 
that  girl  mine,  Lady,"  he  said  in  a  dull  voice: 
"  She  was  mine  until  almost  the  moment  that  the 
man  I  love  best  in  the  world,  married  her.  I 
did  not  know  that  he  meant  to  marry  her,  but 
I  could  have  saved  him.  And  now  I  must  tell 
him  what  she  is,  Lady.  I  must  tell  old  Hutch 
that." 

As  he  spoke  Richarda  felt  the  Jack  she  had 
known  slipping  farther  and  farther  from  her; 
she  was  even  conscious  of  a  horror  of  the  depths 
of  her  cold  repugnance  to  this  hateful  story  and 
to  the  boy  who  was  responsible  for  it. 

"  I  must  go  away  and  think  about  it  all,"  she 
said  remotely.  "  There  is  nothing  you  want  ?  " 

She  went  away. 

This!  —  and  she  had  dreamed  that  she  would 
see  of  the  travail  of  her  soul  and  be  satisfied. 

She  had  set  herself,  alone,  against  all  odds 
345 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

of  inheritance,  to  conquer.  And  she  had  be- 
lieved that  she  must  conquer.  In  spite  of  out- 
ward indication,  she  was  at  heart  an  imperious 
woman;  she  had  demanded  as  her  due  the  justi- 
fication of  her  ambitions  for  this  boy.  And  now 
she  hurled  anathema  in  the  face  of  that  decree 
which  denied  to  her  her  right. 

The  storm  which  raged  in  her  was  the  fiercest 
she  had  ever  known;  and  she  had  known  many. 
It  seemed  to  her  that  the  foundations  upon 
which  she  had  reared  the  structure  of  her  life 
were  in  ruins  —  but  in  her  plans  she  had  al- 
lowed for  no  weakness  of  the  human  material 
with  which  she  built. 

To  the  first  violence  of  her  awakening  there 
succeeded  hours  in  which  she  lay,  unable  to 
think ;  conscious  only  of  such  confusion  of 
suffering  that  at  times  she  wondered  whether 
she  were  suffering  at  all. 

As  for  Homfrey  —  a  certain  hardness  gath- 
ered in  her  mind  towards  him.  It  was  not  that 
she  wished  undone  what  she  had  done,  but  she 
realised  with  intensest  resentment,  how  bitter  the 
doing  had  been  to  her. 

Night  came;  she  did  not  go  down  to  dinner; 
she  sent  word  to  her  husband  that  she  was  worn 
out  and  was  trying  to  get  some  sleep. 
346 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

The  maid  brought  back  to  her  on  a  silver 
tray  a  single  white  rose,  cut  long-stemmed  from 
the  bush  beneath  her  window.  "  Mr.  Homfrey 
said  I  was  to  tell  you  it  is  the  last,"  she  said. 

Richarda  could  hardly  wait  for  the  girl  to 
leave  the  room  —  a  passion  of  tears  was  upon 
her.  For  she  knew  all  that  the  sending  of  that 
rose  to  her  meant;  she  felt  as  never  before  the 
beauty  of  the  life  that  should  have  been  hers 
with  her  husband. 

But  there  was  this  blot  —  this  ugly  sin  that 
could  not  be  got  rid  of  —  that  persisted  domin- 
ant over  all  effort  to  efface  it. 

She  had  wished  her  life  to  be  as  fair  as  this 
white  rose,  and  instead,  she  saw  it  unlovely,  be- 
smirched with  the  mire  from  which  coarse  weeds 
sprung. 

After  a  long  time  she  fell  asleep ;  she  was  too 
weary  to  think  and  suffer  any  more. 

When  she  awoke  she  lay  still  for  some  time; 
she  did  not  remember  the  misery  upon  which 
she  had  gone  to  sleep.  Then  she  noticed  sud- 
denly that  outside  her  windows  the  grey  light 
of  dawn  was  showing;  she  sprang  up  in  instant 
alarm.  Jack !  —  all  these  weeks  he  had  been 
her  first  thought  and  her  last. 

Jack !  She  stopped,  and  put  up  her  hand  un- 
347 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

certainly  to  her  head  —  she  was  remembering. 

Then  she  had  left  him  alone  since  yesterday 
morning  —  cruel !  She  threw  on  her  dressing- 
gown  —  in  a  moment  she  was  in  his  room. 

He  was  alone;  it  was  no  longer  necessary  for 
the  nurse  to  sit  up  with  him. 

As  she  bent  over  him,  she  saw  that  his  eyes 
were  widely  opened ;  there  was  a  look  in  them 
that  alarmed  her.  But  he  knew  her  at  once. 

"  Oh,  Lady,  it's  you.  I'm  so  glad  you've 
come.  I've  been  waiting  for  you.  Because  I 
want  to  tell  you  —  I've  thought  it  all  out  —  I 
know  what  I  can  do.  I  can  die,  you  see.  And 
then  old  Hutch  —  why,  that  would  make  it  all 
right,  wouldn't  it?  "  His  voice  broke  in  a  tense 
whisper. 

Richarda  went  away,  and  came  back  with 
something  for  him  in  a  little  glass. 

"  I  want  you  to  take  this,"  she  said  quietly, 
"  and  then  you're  going  asleep." 

He  obeyed  her  like  a  child ;  when  she  had  him 
settled  on  his  straightened  pillows  he  closed  his 
eyes  with  a  light  sigh.  And  she  began  to  sing 
again,  very  softly,  the  quaint,  sad  little  lullaby 
that  had  soothed  him  these  many  nights. 

For  several  days  after  that  he  lay  in  a  stupor ; 
the  effort  of  confession  had  exhausted  the  little 
348 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

strength  he  had  acquired.  And  she  sat  beside 
him,  working  his  story  over  in  her  mind,  dis- 
secting the  influences  which  had  affected  him  un- 
til she  understood  the  significance  of  many 
things  which  had  been  obscure  to  her.  She 
recognized  at  last  that  Jack  had  needed  her  at 
Waverley  as  he  had  never  needed  her  in  his 
life. 

The  paramount  influence  in  his  later  develop- 
ment had  been  that  of  Maxwell,  and  there  had 
been  nothing  to  counteract  it.  Maxwell !  —  the 
name  grew  abhorrent  to  her.  The  longer  she 
thought,  the  more  clearly  she  became  convinced 
that  he  was  immediately  responsible  for  Jack's 
fall.  He  had  taught  his  most  brilliant  pupil  to 
scoff  at  all  that  she  had  sought  to  teach  him  to 
revere;  he  had  obliterated  the  boy's  innocent  be- 
lief in  goodness  and  purity ;  he  had  trained  him 
to  look  upon  life  as  a  grinning  skull  upon  which 
the  beauty  of  righteousness  was  merely  a  clever 
mask. 

Her  anger  grew ;  was  this  man  to  pursue  his 
work  of  devastation  unchecked?  For  Jack  was 
only  one  of  hundreds  who  came  under  his  in- 
fluence —  what  of  the  others  less  able  even  than 
he  to  withstand  the  blight  Maxwell  cast  upon 
worthy  desires,  upon  those  traditions  hallowed 
349 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

by  long1  service  in  that  persistent  search  after 
faith  which  redeemed  humanity? 

Was  every  one  afraid  of  him  ?  —  was  there  no 
one  who  dared  tell  him  the  truth  ?  —  who  dared 
show  him  that  his  philosophy  of  life  was  false 
—  that  it  was  corrupt  and  debasing? 

Her  soul  burnt  in  a  white  flame  when  she 
looked  at  the  boy  —  at  the  boy  whom  she  had 
sent  forth  pure,  his  heart  high  with  the  blessed 
hope  and  courage  of  youth. 

It  was  Maxwell  who  had  sent  him  back  to  her 
as  he  lay  there  to-day  —  broken  and  despoiled. 


350 


CHAPTER  XX. 

Maxwell  looked  at  the  card. 

"Mrs.   Homfrey?  —  show  her  up." 

"  Here,  Sir?  " 

"  Here  ?  —  of  course,  here." 

He  was  in  one  of  his  most  pyrotechnic  moods ; 
he  preferred  that  his  visitor  should  see  him  sur- 
rounded by  the  tools  which  were  the  evidence  of 
the  scholar's  craft. 

The  half -closed  door  opened  wide  —  Ri- 
charda  came  in.  She  paused ;  the  glare  of  the 
sun  was  still  in  her  eyes,  and  this  unfamiliar  room 
with  its  smoky  atmosphere,  and  its  walls  dark 
with  endless  rows  of  books,  for  the  moment 
dazed  her. 

"  Mrs.  Homfrey  ?  " —  there  was  infinite  grace 
of  deference  in  Maxwell's  manner;  though  he 
frightened  women,  he  was  himself  at  perfect 
ease  with  them. 

"  Yes.  And  you  ?  —  Dr.  Maxwell  ?  "  said 
Richarda  nervously. 

Maxwell  bowed,  a  slight  smile  twisting  the 
corners  of  his  mouth.  "  Let  me  give  you  this 
351 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

chair  —  you  will  not  mind  that  open  window  ?  " 

He  was  deftly  attentive  —  quick  to  relieve  her 
of  her  sunshade  —  she  perceivd  that  he 
had  been  born,  not  manufactured,  a  gentleman. 

She  looked  at  him  timidly,  unconscious  of  the 
na'ive  charm  in  the  dependent  simplicity  of  her 
manner.  The  smile  twisted  Maxwell's  lips 
again. 

Richarda  was  very  much  a  woman.  She  had 
come  forth  upon  this  errand  with  a  soul  aflame 
with  righteous  anger,  but  though  she  held  no 
university  degree,  she  was  a  psychologist  of  no 
mean  order  when  it  came  to  a  question  of  vital 
knowledge  as  to  the  effect  of  certain  sartorial 
values  upon  the  mind  of  man.  And  Maxwell  de- 
cided swiftly,  as  she  had  designed  that  he 
should,  that  she  was  a  woman  very  good  to  look 
at. 

"  You've  come  to  tell  me  about  Homfrey,"  he 
said  easily.  He  was  looking  young  this  morn- 
ing —  and  handsome,  in  a  curiously  whole- 
hearted, boyish  way ;  he  was  disconcertingly  un- 
like the  man  of  her  imagination,  before  whose 
image  she  had  been  for  hours  rehearsing  her 
part.  "  When  I  reached  a  little  hell-hole  in 
Nebraska  the  other  day,  I  found  one  of  my 
students  who  graduated  two  years  ago,  station- 
352 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

master.  That's  what  education  does  for  a  man, 
you  see.  He  was  holding  a  letter  for  me  from 
Mr.  Hutchinson  —  a  letter  I  had  been  anxious 
to  get.  I  had  a  great  time  in  the  West  —  vis- 
ited seven  colleges,  and  received  ovations  all 
along  the  line  from  that  too  enthusiastic  animal, 
the  student." 

"  I  suppose  so,"  said  Richarda. 

"It's  been  pretty  hard  luck  for  Homfrey.  I 
want  to  see  him  as  soon  as  possible.  When  do 
you  think  I  might  ?  " 

"  I  don't  know,"  said  Richarda  slowly. 

"  Of  course  you've  read  his  poem?  " 

"  No." 

"  You  haven't  ?  Good  Lord !  —  it  was  great 
stuff."  Maxwell  wondered  whether  these  peo- 
ple who  had  fostered  Homfrey  understood  at 
all  the  quality  of  the  boy. 

Richarda  suddenly  felt  the  tears  hot  under 
her  dropped  eye-lids.  But  she  only  said  with 
irritating  passivity :  "  Yes  ?  " 

"Yes  —  everlasting  Yes  in  the  case  of  that 
boy,"  said  Maxwell  in  his  bluntest  manner.  "  No 
one  but  a  damned  fool  could  question  it." 

Richarda  looked  up  —  and  at  him  steadily. 
"  Don't  say  that  kind  of  thing  to  me,  Dr.  Max- 
well." 

353 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

Maxwell  laughed.  "  I  beg  your  pardon, 
though  I  do  not  quite  understand  —  but  that 
does  not  matter,  does  it  ?  " 

Whew!  What  pretty  lights  in  her  eyes!  — 
it  was  long  since  he  had  felt  himself  so  enter- 
tained. "  A  little  paint  would  be  a  more  dan- 
gerous thing  than  much  learning,"  he  reflected, 
as  he  watched  the  brilliant  red  of  excitement  and 
embarrassment  glow  suddenly  in  her  face.  He 
flashed  a  daring  glance  at  her. 

Richarda  clasped  her  hands  tightly  together ; 
with  manifest  effort  she  held  back  the  too  quick 
breath  on  her  lips.  "  I  have  a  good  deal  to 
say  to  you,"  she  began  simply.  "  I  wonder  if 
you  will  listen  to  me."  But  she  waited  for  no 
answer;  with  the  sound  of  her  own  voice,  her 
courage  came  fast.  "  Perhaps  you  do  not  real- 
ise that  I  understand  that  what  you  said  just 
now  implies  a  doubt  as  to  my  knowing  what  kind 
of  a  boy  Jack  is  —  what  kind  of  a  mind  he 
has.  I  think  I  know  —  better  perhaps  than  you 
do."  She  waited  a  moment ;  then  to  her  distress 
and  humiliation  she  felt  a  rush  of  tears  upon 
her  face. 

"  You  will  pardon  me  if  I  light  a  cigarette?  " 
said  Maxwell  blandly ;  he  felt  suddenly  irritably 
nervous.  A  woman  —  tears  —  Oh  Lord!  what 
was  he  in  for  now? 

>  354 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

But  Richarda  was  calm  again.  "  I  shall  like 
you  to  smoke.  Then  I  shall  not  be  disturbed  by 
the  feeling  that  you  are  thinking  that  your 
time  is  quite  wasted."  There  was  the  flash  in 
her  eyes  again  that  it  interested  Maxwell  to  see. 
He  had  smoked  a  woman  out  of  his  room  before 
now,  but  as  he  leaned  back  in  his  chair,  looking 
at  Richarda  out  of  keen  half-closed  eyes,  he 
was  not  sure,  in  spite  of  those  obnoxious  tears, 
that  she  was  the  kind  of  woman  he  wanted  to 
smoke  out;  she  promised  an,  experience.  But 
what  the  deuce  was  it  all  about?  What  was  she 
here  for? 

"  I  don't  know  how  to  begin  to  tell  you,"  she 
faltered.  "  It  is  not  easy.  But  I  must.  There 
is  nothing  else  for  me  to  do.  Other  people  may 
never  understand  —  as  I  have  come  to  under- 
stand —  what  it  is  that  happens  to  their  boys  — 
when  they  listen  to  you.  Perhaps  the  boys 
themselves  may  never  understand.  Their  ruin 
may  occur  to  them  so  insidiously,  in  the  form  of 
what  you  may  call  enlightenment,  that  they 
may  not  realise  it.  But  some  day,  when  they 
should  do  the  good  thing,  they  will  do  the  bad 
one  instead.  And  ?.t  will  be  because  of  you." 
Richarda  leaned  forward;  she  looked  steadily 
at  Maxwell ;  she  was  no  longer  afraid. 
355 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

"  The  deuce  it  will !  "  said  Maxwell.  It  oc- 
curred to  him  that  there  is  no  man  so  courageous 
as  the  woman  who  is,  or  fancies  herself  to  be, 
protecting  the  man  for  whom  she  cares  against 
some  other  man.  He  was  infinitely  amused ;  he 
looked  at  Richarda  with  the  slow  smile  that  his 
students  knew  well.  "  I  have  heard  this  before," 
he  added  genially.  "  Many  frenzied  guardians 
of  the  ignorance  of  youth  have  arraigned  me  on 
the  same  charge.  My  guilt  as  a  destroyer  is 
generally  fastened  upon  me  by  quotations  of 
various  of  my  remarks  as  to  the  value  of  the 
Pentateuch  as  history,  or  as  to  the  poetic  beauty 
of  the  tale  of  the  Virgin  Birth.  These  people 
invariable  treat  all  such  questions  as  events  at 
which  they  were  almost  if  not  quite  present.  Is 
it  anything  like  that?  "  He  smiled  again. 

"  I  wish  it  were,"  said  Richarda  simply. 
"  Those  seem  to  me  very  irrelevant  matters. 
What  I  want  to  talk  to  you  about  is  something 
that  has  the  most  real  relation  to  the  question  of 
our  own  ways  in  life  —  to  the  ways  of  these  boys, 
and  to  your  influence  upon  them.  You  know, 
don't  you? — "  she  looked  at  him  wistfully  — 
"  that  you  have  more  influence  on  the  students 
here  than  all  the  other  professors  put  to- 
gether." 

356 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

"  You  honour  me,  Mrs.  Homfrey." 

She  ignored  the  sarcastic  inflection.  "  When 
I  sent  Jack  to  you  four  years  ago  I  believed  that 
he  was  going  to  fulfill  all  my  ambitions  for  him. 
I  had  many.  He  went  away  from  me  all  that  I 
could  have  wished  him  to  be." 

Maxwell  muttered  something;  the  stupidity 
of  the  woman  with  her  vapid  sentimentalising 
over  the  unfortunate  male  within  her  gates ! 

"  Perhaps  I  should  tell  you,"  he  remarked 
with  quiet  incisiveness :  "  that  one  of  the  first 
things  I  consider  it  my  duty  to  do  for  the  sopho- 
more class,  is  to  cut  it  loose  from  its  mother's 
apron-string.  There  is  no  more  vicious  tie,  my 
dear  woman,  for  the  young  human  animal  after 
he  reaches  a  certain  age." 

"  I  think  I  understand  that  —  I  had  always 
been  thinking  of  the  coming  of  that  time  —  I 
had  wished  to  prepare  Jack  for  it.  I  had  rea- 
sons for  wishing  it  to  come  — :"  her  voice  quiv- 
ered — "  I  even  wished  to  be  rid  of  the  respon- 
sibility of  Jack." 

Maxwell  felt  some  astonishment.  "  You 
wished  to  be  rid  of  him?  Of  course,  I  under- 
stand that  you  and  your  husband  are  not  his 
parents." 

But  Richarda  went  on  as  if  she  had  not  no- 
357 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

ticed.  "  I  let  him  go  willingly.  There  came  a 
time  when  he  felt  himself  cut  off  from  me.  And 
I  think  he  had  never  needed  me  as  much  as  he 
did  just  then.  For  he  came  under  your  influence. 
And  you  took  away  from  him  everything  that 
he  had  faith  in  —  even  perhaps,  his  faith  in 
me." 

"  His  faith  in  you  ?  Was  there  any  particu- 
lar reason  why  he  should  have  faith  in  you? 
Do  you  consider  yourself  better  than  other 
women,  Mrs.  Homfrey?  " 

How  often  he  had  said  to  Jack  that  there  was 
not  one  of  them  who  had  not  her  price  if  a  man 
were  only  shrewd  enough  to  guess  it  —  and  he 
had  thought  himself  persuaded  that  he  believed 
it. 

Richarda's  eyes  measured  him  calmly.  "  I 
think  I  must  at  least  be  better  than  some  of  the 
women  you  have  known,  Dr.  Maxwell." 

"  That  would  be  easy." 

"  No  doubt." 

Maxwell  felt  an  instant's  impulse  to  pick  up 
this  woman  and  carry  her  to  the  landing  for 
the  purpose  of  dropping  her  over  the  stairs. 
Then  he  smiled;  he  was  a  philosopher,  and  the 
antics  of  humanity  quite  as  valuable  to  the  in- 
vestigator as  its  aspirations. 
358 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

"  Of  course,  I  understand  now  what  you  wish 
to  tell  me,  Mrs.  Homfrey,"  he  said  suavely. 
"  The  last  time  that  I  saw  Homfrey  he  was  in 
a  half -hysterical  state  —  he  was  ill  then  — 
though  I  did  not  realise  it.  But  I  feared  that 
he  had  got  into  some  entanglement,  and  I  asked 
him  about  a  girl  here  —  you  may  have  heard 
him  mention  her.  His  answers  to  me  were  un- 
satisfactory, but  I  hear  that  the  girl's  marriage 
is  announced  to  one  of  our  instructors, —  fine 
fellow,  too : —  so  that  incident,  if  there  ever  was 
any,  is  inadmissible,  and  Homfrey  well  out  of  it. 
But  I  understand  your  view  as  to  the  affair.  It 
is  inevitable,  and  quite  proper  —  for  you.  You 
evidently  think  you  know  something  that  I  do 
not,  and  I  suppose  you  attribute  what  you  con- 
sider Homfrey's  "  fall  "  to  me.  Your  standard 
for  him,  is,  of  course,  what  it  would  be  for  your 
daughter."  Maxwell  laughed  softly.  "  It's  a 
pretty  theory  of  things,  but  it  leaves  out  of 
sight  the  fact  that  boys  are  not  girls.  You 
have  lived  the  sheltered  life  of  your  class,  but 
I  imagine  you  think  you  know  a  good  deal  of 
life  —  every  married  woman  imagines  that  — 
in  reality,  you  probably  know  just  what  your 
husband  chooses  to  permit  you  to  know.  Of  the 
actual  influences  which  go  to  the  making  of 
359 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

men  you  have  a  boudoir  conception.  The  fact 
that  you  think  that  I  have  contaminated  your 
boy  is  sufficient  evidence  of  this.  Lord !  "  Max- 
well laughed  again. 

Richarda  sat  quite  still. 

"  It  never  seems  to  occur  to  good  women," 
continued  Maxwell,  "  that  the  man  of  their 
idealisation  would  be  as  exossate  as  a  jelly-fish. 
The  place  of  empiricism  in  human  life  —  they 
allow  nothing  for  that." 

"  You  think,  then,  that  Jack  is  better  —  that 
he  has  taken  a  step  up,  because  — " 

"  That  is  heroic  statement,"  interrupted  Max- 
well impatiently.  "  The  boy  has  been  a  fool. 
I  told  him  so.  But  this  matter  is  one  that  a 
man  cannot  discuss  satisfactorily  with  a  woman. 
She  mistakes  Mrs.  Grundy's  point  of  view  for 
her  own  and  the  Deity's." 

"  Perhaps  —  sometimes,"  said  Richarda 
gently.  "  But,  in  this  case  —  you  think,  then, 
that  it  does  not  matter  about  Mr.  Hutchinson  ?  " 

"  What  doesn't  matter?  " 

Richarda  flushed,  but  she  looked  directly  at 
Maxwell.  "  I  think  you  understand." 

Maxwell  shrugged  his  shoulders.  "  I  think 
Hutchinson  has  to  take  his  chances  in  marry- 
ing as  every  fool  does.  Who  knows  what  he's 
360 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

getting?  It's  a  deuced  nasty  situation  of 
course,  but  there  have  been  worse.  And  the 
sooner  Homfrey  gets  off  to  Berlin  and  forgets 
it,  the  better  for  all  parties  concerned." 

"  You  think  he  can  forget  it  ?  "  Richarda's 
voice  was  very  quiet. 

"  It's  the  only  decent  thing  he  can  do.  What 
else  could  he  do?  " 

"  Suppose  he  thought  he  ought  to  tell  Mr. 
Hutchinson?  " 

For  a  moment  Maxwell  stared  at  her.  "  Tell 
Hutchinson !  —  Oh,  the  — !  "  he  suppressed  an 
exclamation.  Then  his  anger  rose  —  his  brows 
ground  together  in  deep  black  lines.  "  Perhaps 
I  ought  to  tell  you,  Mrs.  Homfrey,  that,  in  a 
way,  I  have  undertaken  Homfrey.  I  have  an 
interest  in  his  future  which  gives  me  some  rights. 
As  I  have  said  to  you,  I  wish  to  see  him  —  I 
should  like—" 

"  And  I  should  like  you  to  see  him,"  broke  in 
Richarda.  "  I  should  like  you  to  see  him  just 
as  he  is  now.  I  should  like  you  to  see  what  a 
boy,  once  pure  and  noble  and  full  of  fine  ambi- 
tions becomes,  when  he  has  lived  what  you  have 
taught  him  to  believe.  You  may  not  be  con- 
sistent enough  to  do  as  you  think,  but  my  boy 
has  been.  And  I  should  like  you  to  see  the  re- 
361 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

suit  of  your  teaching,  and  then  I  should  like 
to  know  what  you  think  of  your  work." 

"  My  dear  Mrs.  Homfrey  — " 

Richarda  held  up  her  hand.  "  I  think  it  is 
my  turn.  I  have  been  silent  while  you  have 
spoken.  I  have  listened  while  you  arraigned 
me  as  a  woman  with  a  Mrs.  Grundy  conception 
of  things  —  while  you  sneered  at  my  ignorance. 
I  wonder  how  ignorant  of  what  you  call  life, 
you  will  think  me  when  I  tell  you  some  things 
—  for  I  mean  to  tell  you  some  things  that  I 
never  speak  of  to  anyone.  For  you  shall  not, 
if  I  can  help  it,  ruin  another  boy  as  recklessly  as 
you  have  ruined  Jack.  And  I  think  that  you 
are,  in  spite  of  all  that  you  say,  a  better  man 
than  you  believe.  I  think — " 

"  Thank  you.  That  is  also,  a  little  way 
women  have  of  regarding  the  men  it  interests 
them  to  consider  depraved.  Psychologically, 
it  is  considered  to  be  due  more  to  a  physiological 
impulse,  I  believe,  than  to  the  spiritual  one  upon 
which  they  plume  themselves." 

Richarda  looked  at  him  with  contempt.  "  It 
was  a  mistake  —  that  remark.  You  know  it, 
Dr.  Maxwell.  But  I  must  hurry.  When  I  was 
married  eighteen  years  ago  —  Oh,  I  am  nob 
going  to  tell  you  about  myself — I  am  only 
362 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

going  to  tell  you  about  Jack.  What  I  had 
meant  to  say  was,  that  when  I  had  been  mar- 
ried about  two  years  —  my  husband  was  away 
from  home  —  a  girl  came  to  see  me.  She  told 
me  that  she  had  a  little  boy  —  her  child  —  she 
told  me  that  she  must  give  him  to  someone.  You 
see,  she  had  —  she  was  going  to  marry  a  man, 
who  could  do  well  by  her,  but  he  must  never 
know  about  the  boy."  Richarda's  voice  lagged 
as  if  unable  to  keep  pace  with  the  gait  set  for  it 
by  the  force  which  was  driving  her  to  speech. 
"  She  had  heard  of  me  through  my  servants  — 
she  thought  I  would  be  kind  to  the  little  boy  — 
she  gave  him  to  me." 

"  The  boy,  of  course,  is  Jack  Homfrey,"  said 
Maxwell  swiftly. 

"  Yes.     The  boy  is  —  Jack." 

"  But  your  husband  —  men  as  a  rule  don't 
care  about  adopting  stray  children.  And  you 
have  a  son  of  your  own  —  I've  heard  Homfrey 
speak  of  him." 

Maxwell  was  looking  steadily  at  Richarda  — 
he  had  forgotten  his  cigarette. 

"  Yes.  I  have  a  son  of  my  own,"  repeated 
Richarda  mechanically. 

"  But  your  husband  —  it  seems  to  me  —  did 
your  husband  approve  of  your  taking  the  child 
363 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

to   assist    in   the   hoodwinking   of   a    deserving 
man?" 

Richarda's  eyes  unconsciously  expressed  a 
sudden  fright ;  then  she  drew  herself  together. 

"  My  husband  had  nothing  to  do  with  it." 

"  Your  husband  had  nothing  to  do  with  it? 
Pardon  me,  Mrs.  Homfrey,  but  the  case  seems 
unique.  Your  husband  had  nothing  to  do  with 
your  taking  a  cast-off  child  into  your  home,  to 
bring  up  with  his  own  son  ?  " 

"  Yes,  of  course,  in  a  way."  Richarda  spoke 
carefully.  "  But  my  husband  has  always  left 
me  very  free  to  do  as  I  chose  about  things.  I 
told  him  that  I  wished  to  see  what  I  could  do 
with  the  child  —  that  I  wanted  to  see  whether 
I  could  not  bring  him  up  to  be  good.  It  was  a 
great  opportunity,  I  thought." 

"  Very,"  assented  Maxwell. 

"  You  see,  women  like  me  have  so  little  chance 
to  do  anything  that  really  matters,"  continued 
Richarda. 

"  Very  little." 

"  But  this  gave  me  one.  My  life  has  seemed 
very  full  with  Jack  to  think  of.  I  was  al- 
ways thinking  about  him,,  and  planning  for 
him." 

"  And  yet  — "  for  a  moment  Maxwell  paused, 
364 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

considering  — "  you  said  the  time  came  when 
you  wanted  to  get  rid  of  him." 

The  frightened  look  came  back  into  Ri- 
charda's  eyes.  "  I  am  not  sure  that  I  meant  just 
that.  I  should  not  have  said  that." 

Maxwell  lighted  another  cigarette.  "  I  don't 
see  why  you  shouldn't.  It  seems  to  me  quite 
natural.  I  suppose  the  time  came  when  you 
got  tired  of  the  responsibility  of  a  boy  — "  he 
looked  steadily  at  Richarda  — "  who  had  no  pos- 
sible claim  upon  you  or  your  husband." 

The  breath  upon  Richarda's  lips  ceased  for 
a  moment ;  then  she  turned  to  Maxwell.  "  I  am 
afraid  I  am  talking  too  much  —  about  myself, 
I  mean.  But  you  see,  now,  don't  you?  —  why 
I  wanted  to  tell  you  —  why  I  have  cared  so 
much?  I  had  made  Jack  my  charge,  my  life's 
work  — "  she  smiled  as  if  to  indicate  to  Maxwell 
her  appreciation  of  the  humour  of  the  expres- 
sion as  applied  to  anything  that  she  might  do, 
but  in  the  next  moment,  her  eyes  had  clouded. 
"  And  I  did  —  I  did  make  of  Jack  what  I 
wanted  him  to  be.  And  then  you  came." 

"  Yes,  I  came."  Maxwell  leaned  slightly  for- 
ward. "  I  admit  that.  I  see  your  case  against 
me.  And  I  understand  that  from  your  point 
of  view,  it  has  a  googl  deal  of  justification.  But 
365 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

• — you  see,  I  am  curious.  The  motives  of  peo- 
ple have  a  morbid  interest  for  me  —  the  motives 
of  some  people.  I  should  like  to  ask  you  some- 
thing. Was  it  for  Jack's  own  sake  that  you 
made  him  your  charge  — -  that  you  took  him  into 
your  home  in  the  first  place?  " 

For  a  moment  Richarda  sat  silent;  she  won- 
dered confusedly  what  was  making  this  so  diffi- 
cult. It  had  all  been  simple  enough  when  she 
had  left  home  upon  her  errand.  Now  it  seemed 
as  if  it  all  consisted  of  things  she  must  not  say 
—  things  which  demanded  impossible  explana- 
tion. But  certainly,  she  had  not  come  here  to 
answer  questions.  She  looked  with  dignity  at 
Maxwell. 

"  I  do  not  think  that  we  need  discuss  my 
motives." 

"  Oh,  we  need  not.  But  the  trouble  is  —  I 
want  to,"  said  Maxwell  calmly.  "  You  see,  while 
you  have  been  talking  to  me,  I  have  been  reach- 
ing conclusions.  And  I  have  formed  the  opin- 
ion that  you  took  the  boy  for  your  husband's 
sake." 

Richarda  looked  at  Maxwell. 

"  Curious  —  what  women  will  do  for  men." 
Maxwell  shrugged  his  shoulders.     "  And  what 
they  will  not  do  for  them." 
366 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

Richarda's  eyes  flashed.  But  in  the  next  in- 
stant her  courage  was  gone  again.  "  I  do  not 
know  what  you  mean,"  she  said  nervelessly. 

"  My  dear  lady,  don't  let  us  waste  time.  The 
story,  as  you  tell  it,  and  —  if  you  will  pardon 
me  —  as  one  looks  at  you,  is  simplicity  itself. 
But  there  is  something  that  I  do  not  quite  fath- 
om. Homfrey  has  always  been  frank  with 
me.  He  told  me  that  you  had  brought  him  up, 
but  does  he  know  —  No,  he  surely  does  not  — 
that—" 

Richarda  stood  up  suddenly.  "  Please  don't 
ask  me  anything,  Dr.  Maxwell  —  there  is  noth- 
ing that  I  can  tell  you." 

"  Then  he  does  not  know  that  your  husband 
is  his  father.  Well,  you  have  an  interesting 
situation  there,  Mrs.  Homfrey." 

Richarda  sat  down  again ;  the  tears  which 
had  come  so  bitterly  into  her  eyes  did  not  fall. 
She  was  thinking  fast  now,  with  the  instinct  to 
protect  Homfrey  paramount.  The  catastrophe 
which  she  had  so  unwittingly  brought  upon  her- 
self must  wait  —  her  own  humiliation  —  what 
did  it  matter? 

"  Your  husband  — "  began  Maxwell  again. 

Richarda  stiffened.  "  I  do  not  know  why 
you  insist  upon — " 

367 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

Maxwell  laughed.  "  I  should  like  to  ask  your 
husband  — 

"  M j  husband? — "  Involuntarily,  Richarda 
clasped  her  hands.  "  But  my  husband  — 

"  Your  husband  — "  repeated  Maxwell  —  he 
was  looking  at  her  with  his  slight  sarcastic 
smile,  for  he  was  thinking,  that  in  spite  of  her 
devotion,  she  had  probably  made  things  rather 
difficult  for  the  erring  Homfrey  —  he  had  un- 
doubtedly had  to  do  a  great  deal  of  repenting. 
Well,  a  woman  had  to  do  one  of  two  things  in 
life  —  either  get  into  mischief  herself,  or  spend 
her  time  imagining  that  she  kept  some  man  out 
of  it.  "  Your  husband  —  "  repeated  Maxwell  — 
"  He  has  probably  worn  out  a  good  many  suits 
of  sackcloth,  hasn't  he?  " 

But  Richarda  said  nothing;  he  was  puzzled 
by  her  indifference  to  the  taunt.  Then  it  oc- 
curred to  him  that  she  had  not  told  him  what  he 
most  wanted  to  know. 

"  I  have  never  met  your  husband.  That's 
rather  strange.  But  now  that  I  know  what  you 
have  told  me,  I  shall  have  great  interest  in  doing 
so." 

He  waited,  but  Richarda  made  no  answer; 
she  was  looking  out  of  the  window,  her  face 
struck  him  as  strangely  still.  And  then  he  saw, 
368 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

that  with  hardly  the  stirring  of  a  breath  to  be- 
tray her,  the  tears  standing  full  in  her  eyes, 
had  begun  slowly  to  fall. 

Poor  child !  She  must  have  been  a  tender 
thing  in  her  twenties  to  face  an  experience  like 
that ;  she  looked  adorably  girlish  even  now.  She 
had  undoubtedly  suffered  —  people  choose  to 
suffer  in  such  strange  ways  —  but  he  hated  the 
thought  of  suffering  for  anyone.  He  would 
spend  hours  over  a  wounded  bird,  in  the  effort 
to  stay  its  pain ;  if  its  life  fluttered  out,  he 
would  brood  for  the  rest  of  the  day,  sullen  and 
unappeased,  his  mind  filled  with  black  thoughts 
which  wrought  themselves  in  aching  pessimistic 
line  upon  his  face. 

This  woman  —  with  the  still  tears  upon  her 
face  —  she  looked  like  a  white  dove  with  a  — 
Maxwell  paused,  with  a  sudden  smile  for  him- 
self. Yes,  she  was  a  woman  —  a  woman  of 
charm ;  the  magic  of  sex  was  working  upon  him 
as  it  would  upon  the  rawest  boy. 

And  then  Richarda  turned  to  him.  "  I  have 
made  a  great  mistake,"  she  said  in  a  low  voice. 
"  I  have  done  my  husband  a  great  wrong.  I 
have  made  it  possible  for  you  to  know,  what  I 
never  meant  anyone  to  know.  And  now  I  have 
to  ask  you  — "  for  a  moment  she  was  silent  be- 
369 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

cause  of  the  quivering  of  her  lips  —  "I  have  to 
ask  you  to  help  me."  She  waited  again.  "  My 
husband  must  not  know.  If  you  met  him  —  if 
you  talked  to  him  — " 

"  You  do  not  suppose  — "  began  Maxwell  — 
then  he  stopped.  "  You  do  not  mean  — "  he 
stopped  again. 

"  Yes,  I  mean  that,"  said  Richarda. 

Maxwell  straightened  his  shoulders.  "  My 
dear  lady,  what  do  you  mean?  " 

Richarda  looked  at  him  wondering.  "  There 
is  only  one  thing  that  I  could  mean.  I  mean 
that  my  husband  must  never  know  that  he  is  — " 
but  she  could  not  say  it;  she  looked  helplessly 
at  Maxwell.  Then  as  he  said  nothing,  she  blun- 
dered on,  too  nervous  to  stop.  "  You  see,  I 
never  told  him.  He  has  never  known  that  Jack 
is  —  I  couldn't.  It  was  the  way  I  felt  about  it 
—  I  could  not  have  everything  destroyed  be- 
tween us.  But  lately  —  I  don't  know.  I  don't 
know  that  that  was  best.  It  is  sometimes  so 
hard  to  tell  what  is  best.  Don't  you  think  it 
is?" 

But  Maxwell  said  nothing ;  he  seemed  for  the 

moment   interested   only   in   his   cigarette,    and 

Richarda  felt  herself  somehow  rebuked ;  she  did 

not  understand  for  what.     Every  moment  now 

370 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

only  added  to  her  consciousness  that  she  had 
made  a  fatal  mistake.  And  she  had  been  so 
sure  of  herself! 

"  I  must  go,"  she  said  wearily.  "  I  haven't 
said  what  I  came  to  say.  I  came  here  thinking 
only  of  Jack,  and  of  those  other  boys,  who  per- 
haps have  no  one  to  care  for  them  as  I  had  cared 
for  him." 

Maxwell  turned  upon  her.  "  Did  you  think 
you  were  good  to  the  boy?  Has  it  never 
occurred  to  you  what  a  wrong  it  was  to  him,  to 
let  him  grow  up  without  knowing  who  his  father 
was?  Do  you  think  the  boy  hasn't  suffered  as 
he  had  no  business  to  suffer?  I  know  that  he 
has.  I  understand  some  things  in  Homfrey  that 
I  have  never  understood  before." 

Richarda  shrank  from  him.  "  Yes,  it  was 
cruel  —  cruel.  But  isn't  that  the  way  some- 
times with  doing  what  you  think  is  right  ?  There 
seems  always  to  be  a  wrong  in  it." 

"  Is  that  different  from  what  I  have  taught 
my  students  ?  "  asked  Maxwell. 

Her  change  of  manner  was  swift ;  in  an  in- 
stant she  was  his  accuser  again. 

"  Different  ?  —  As  different  as  light  from 
day.  You  know  that.  You  know  that  your 
method  has  been  to  ridicule  right  and  wrong  to 
371 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

your  students.  You  know  that  you  have  led 
them  to  believe  that  what  we  commonly  call 
right  or  wrong  is  a  mere  difference  of  opinion 
—  that  there  is  inherently  no  such  thing  as 
right  or  wrong.  Perhaps  there  is  not.  But 
I  want  to  ask  you  what  your  theories  have 
done  for  Jack.  Have  they  helped  to  make  him 
strong  when  he  needed  to  be  strong?  You 
know  they  have  not.  You  know  they  have  only 
helped  to  weaken  him  when  he  came  in  contact 
with  temptation.  Oh,  what  is  the  use  of  talk- 
ing to  you?  You  will  not  care.  You  can 
never  understand  how  dreadful  all  this  has  been 
to  me  —  how  I  have  suffered.  I  wanted  to  do 
so  much,  and  I  have  done  nothing.  I  wanted 
Jack  to  be  good  —  I  wanted  to  be  glad  that  he 
was  alive.  And  as  long  as  he  was  with  me  he 
was  good.  I  don't  think  that  he  could  have 
been  anything  else  —  he  knew  that  I  loved  him 
so.  He  knew  that  I  cared  so  —  though  he 
never  knew  why." 

"  I  should  like  to  know  why  you  think  you 
cared,"  said  Maxwell  coldly.  Something  in  this 
woman  roused  all  his  bitterness  —  this  woman 
who  did  impossible  things,  and  did  not  seem  to 
know  that  they  were  impossible.  But  she 
roused  something  else  also. 
372 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

Richarda  turned  a  wonderfully  clear  gaze 
upon  him.  "  Why  should  I  tell  you?  You 
would  never  understand.  You  would  only 
laugh.  You  don't  believe  in  the  things  that  I 
believe  in." 

"  How  can  you  know  if  you  do  not  tell  me 
what  they  are  ?  " 

She  hesitated ;  then  she  shook  her  head. 
"  No,  I  cannot  talk  of  that.  That  only  has  to 
do  with  —  "  she  checked  herself.  "  Oh,  I  am 
afraid  I  have  done  all  wrong.  But  I  have 
loved  my  life  so.  Can't  you  understand 
that?  " 

Maxwell  said  nothing. 

"  But  I  have  suffered  so,"  she  went  on,  almost 
in  a  whisper.  It  was  a  cry  —  Maxwell  saw 
that  it  was  wrung  from  her  unconsciously. 
"  And  there  is  more.  Because  I  have  failed. 
All  those  years  —  ever  since  he  was  a  little  boy 
—  everything  that  I  did  for  him,  I  did  with  the 
hope  that  I  should  be  able  to  make  him  strong 
against  the  coming  of  that  time  when  he  might 
first  feel  —  what  it  was  perhaps  in  his  blood  to 
feel.  And  you  —  what  did  you  do  to  help 
me?  "  She  looked  straight  at  Maxwell.  "  In 
his  delirium  —  " 

"  It  is  generally  admitted  that  the  best  f  el- 
373 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

lows  say  the  worst  things  when  they're  deliri- 
ous, I  believe,"  observed  Maxwell. 

"  Then  if  Jack  was  speaking  for  you,  Dr. 
Maxwell,  which  he  appeared  to  be,  I  have  every 
reason  to  have  the  highest  opinion  of  you," 
flashed  Richarda. 

Maxwell  laughed.  But  Richarda  hardly 
noticed  that. 

"  What  am  I  to  do  ?  Where  am  I  to  begin 
again?  "  she  asked.  "  Everything  that  I  tried 
to  do  is  undone." 

"  I  don't  quite  see  that,"  said  Maxwell  slowly. 

"No  —  that  is  just  it.     You  don't  see  it." 

There  was  a  little  silence ;  then  Maxwell  spoke. 
"  I  think  perhaps  you  don't  understand  —  " 

Richarda  broke  in  impetuously.  "  Oh,  don't 
say  that  to  me.  I  know  I  don't  understand. 
My  life  has  been  full  of  things  that  I  didn't  un- 
derstand." 

Maxwell  did  not  reply;  he  seemed  to  have 
relapsed  suddenly  into  one  of  his  heaviest,  most 
abstracted  moods.  The  air  of  gay  boyishness 
which  was  the  first  thing  Richarda  had  noticed 
about  him  when  she  came  into  the  room,  had 
gone;  the  man  she  looked  at  now  was  one  upon 
whose  face  experience  had  left  the  print  of  its 
heel.  He  was  no  longer  smoking,  and  in  his 
374 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

silence  and  immobility  she  caught  the  impres- 
sion of  a  strange  isolation  —  the  isolation  of 
one  who  has  been  set  outside  the  happy  common- 
place Eden  of  life  by  some  power  that  wrought 
in  him  to  destroy. 

It  was  not  until  she  moved  to  put  on  her 
gloves,  that  Maxwell  spoke. 

"  You  have  told  me  your  story.  I  will  tell 
you  mine.  It  is  true  that  I  have  had  no  faith 
in  women.  I  married  young,  and  I  had  —  as 
many  illusions  as  you  had,  I  suppose.  I  loved 
my  wife  —  it's  a  curse  to  me  to  remember  how 
I  loved  her  —  it's  hell.  I  was  a  fool  —  I  was 
so  happy.  And  so  was  she.  Yes,  she  was 
happy,  until  —  "  he  stopped  a  moment  —  "  the 
man  was  my  best  friend  —  and  she  went  away 
with  him  —  the  man  who  knew  better  than  any- 
one else,  except  herself,  how  I  loved  her.  That's 
all.  It  isn't  much  to  tell.  But  it  has  taken  a 
long  time  to  live.  And  it  has  made  me  what  I 
am."  He  thought  a  little ;  then  he  added.  "  No, 
it  has  made  me  what  I  chose  to  let  it  make  me." 

Richarda  broke  into  tears ;  there  was  such  a 
forlorn  quality  in  this  tragedy  —  in  its  simplic- 
ity and  suppression  of  detail. 

"  It  seems  to  be  ruin  everywhere,"  she  said 
hopelessly.  "  Ruin  for  you  and  ruin  for  me." 
375 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

"  Ruin  for  you  ?  "  repeated  Maxwell.  "  And 
yet  you  say  that  boy  has  been  at  death's  door 
over  this  business?" 

Richarda  looked  at  him,  perplexed. 

"  My  little  woman  — "  His  voice  grew 
strangely  tender  — "  don't  you  understand  ? 
This  is  your  day  of  triumph.  Don't  you  see 
that  it  is  because  of  what  you  have  taught  him, 
that  he  is  the  wreck  that  he  is  —  that  he  has 
suffered  as  he  has,  and  as  he  will  suffer?  Have 
you  any  right  to  ask  more  than  that?  " 

The  stern  coercion  of  the  life  of  the  spirit  — 
it  was  the  heritage  of  his  Scottish  blood  —  in  the 
supreme  moment  it  conquered  the  bitterness  and 
the  unbelief  that  a  woman's  falseness  had  engen- 
dered in  him  —  in  this  man,  destined  to  have 
been  made  strong  by  the  love  of  wife,  of  chil- 
dren, of  home.  He  stood  revealed,  in  the  self 
that  was  rightly  his,  before  this  woman  whose 
simple  unconsciousness  of  the  magnitude  of 
her  loyalty  to  the  man  she  loved,  had  compelled 
from  him  a  tribute  that  was  a  witness  to  his  own 
inviolable  faith. 

He  took  her  down  to  the  carriage  that  waited 
for  her  —  when  he  came  back  to  his  empty 
room,  he  stared  about  it,  desolate.  For  the  first 
time  in  long  years,  a  woman  had  come  nigh  him 
as  only  a  woman  could. 

376 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

He  looked  at  the  empty  chair  in  which  she 
had  sat  —  her  handkerchief  lay  dropped  beside 
it;  he  picked  it  up,  the  faintly  perfumed  trifle, 
and  stood  with  it,  there,  in  his  hand,  strangely 
helpless.  For  it  spoke  to  him  of  things  forgot- 
ten, denied;  of  things  accursed  in  his  memory. 

He  laid  it  down  gently,  and  buried  his  face 
in  his  hands. 


377 


CHAPTER   XXI 

"  But  the  boy  is  better,"  said  Dawson. 

"  Yes,"  said  Richarda. 

"  Then  what  —  why  aren't  you  —  in  fact, 
what  is  the  trouble?  " 

"The  trouble?" 

Dawson  looked  at  her.  Then  he  continued: 
"  You  see,  I've  been  talking  to  Jack.  He  says 
nothing,  and  neither  do  you,  but  just  to  look  at 
you  —  well,  do  you  suppose,  for  instance,  that 
it's  exhilarating  to  Homfrey  to  see  you  looking 
as  if  you  were  being  worried  into  your  grave, 
and  not  to  know  why  ?  " 

"  Tim !     But  I've  tried  —  " 

"  Yes,  you've  tried  hard  enough,  the  Lord 
knows.  But  don't  you  think  now  it's  about 
time  to  stop  trying?  " 

"To  stop  trying?" 

"  Yes.  Has  it  never  occurred  to  you  that  it 
might  not  be  the  duty  of  one  woman  to  bear 
more  than  her  just  load?  " 

Richarda's  colour  rose.     Then  she  said  stiffly : 
"  I  don't  understand  you,  Mr,  Dawson." 
373 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

"  No.  Well,  what  I  mean  is  this.  Some- 
thing's wrong.  It's  this  boy's  mind  that  has 
been  ill.  You  know  that,  and  I  suppose  you 
knoAV  why.  Do  you  think  I  sat  up  there  yester- 
day with  you  two  without  arriving  at  some  con- 
clusions ?  —  Oh,  a  great  many !  " 

"  You  are  quite  right,"  said  Richarda  calmly. 
"Something  is  wrong.  But  it  will  come  right." 
She  smiled  at  Dawson. 

"  I  see."  Dawson  considered.  Then  he 
looked  at  her  very  directly.  "  I  may  under- 
stand, then,  that  at  last,  you  mean  to  tell  Tim?  " 

"  Mean  to  tell  Tim  ?  What  has  Jack's  con- 
dition to  do  with  Tim?" 

"  What  has  it  to  do  with  Tim?  Hasn't  it 
everything  to  do  with  Tim?  " 

"  I  don't  know  what  you  mean,"  said  Ri- 
charda. She  did  not,  but  she  grew  slowly 
white. 

Dawson  was  conscious  at  this  moment  of  a 
strange  sternness,  which  arose  from  his  tender- 
ness for  this  woman  who  had  done  as  she  had, 
God  only  knew  for  what  reason.  The  whole 
thing  was  outrageous,  impossible,  incomprehen- 
sible. It  was  a  most  specious  form  of  self-de- 
ceit —  it  was  — 

"  I  mean  this,"  he  said  sharply.  "  I  mean 
379 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

that  it's  time  for  you  to  tell  your  husband  who 
Jack  is." 

Richarda  sat  quite  still  —  not  a  quiver  dis- 
turbed her  face,  or  her  hands  lightly  clasped  in 
her  lap.  The  shock  was  too  great ;  for  the  mo- 
ment everything  was  dead  in  her. 

Dawson  got  up  and  went  over  to  her  —  he 
felt  confused  and  ashamed.  Yet  he  had  done 
the  right  thing  —  the  only  sane  thing  to  do. 
He  was  sure  of  that.  Her  view,  whatever  it 
was,  was  all  wrong.  It  was  distorted,  hyster- 
ical —  the  view  of  a  woman  — 

"  Mrs.  Homfrey !  "  —  it  was  an  entreaty  — 
yet  he  did  not  know  what  he  sought. 

Richarda  looked  at  him  - —  there  was  no  sur- 
render in  her  face. 

"  I  couldn't  help  it,"  he  stammered.  "  I've 
always  known  I  should  tell  you  sometime.  I 
didn't  try  to  find  out.  It  just  happened  — 
that  night,  you  remember  —  when  Jack  came  in 
from  Waverley  — 

She  remembered. 

"  I  couldn't  help  myself.  They  looked  at 
each  other,  and  I  saw  it  all  in  a  moment  —  I 
couldn't  understand  why  they  didn't  see  it  for 
themselves.  I've  felt  like  a  sneak  ever  since." 

And  still  Richarda  said  nothing. 
380 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

"  Oh  please !  —  don't  you  see  that  we  must 
look  at  these  things  in  a  reasonable  way?  If 
they  are,  they  are,  and  we  must  face  them.  And 
perhaps  I  can  help  you." 

Richarda  looked  up  from  the  midst  of  her 
agony  of  humiliation  —  that  humiliation  from 
which  she  had  spent  her  life  in  defending  her- 
self. 

"  You  are  very  good,  Mr.  Dawson.  But  I 
wish  no  help  from  anyone." 

He  sat  down  beside  her  —  against  her  will  he 
took  her  struggling  hands  in  his  big,  quiet  ones. 

"  My  child,  someone  must  help  you.  You've 
been  a  brave  long  time  coming  to  the  place  where 
you  are  now,  but  you're  there.  And  I'd  despise 
myself  if  I  let  you  take  another  step  alone.  I'm 
going  to  stand  by  you  now  as  I  would  want 
Homfrey  to  stand  by  Sarah  in  the  same  case. 
Child,  I  know  how  Homfrey  has  felt  about  this 
boy  being  back  on  you  again  —  sick  in  your 
home,  and  you  giving  yourself  up  to  him  like 
a  mother.  I've  never  seen  Homfrey  in  the  state 
he  was  in,  in  the  office  this  morning.  It  won't 
do,  my  girl.  We've  got  to  get  the  air  cleared, 
and  there's  only  one  way  now  to  do  it." 

Richarda  stood  up  —  she  looked  as  if  she 
needed  a  wide  space. 

381 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

"  If  you  mean  —  if  you  mean  that  I  —  No, 
I  will  never  do  that.  It  is  not  for  you  to  dictate 
to  me  what  I  should  do.  What  is  your  right  to 
come  between  me  and  my  husband?  You  do 
not  understand  —  you  do  not  know  —  " 

"  Tell  me,"  interposed  Dawson  gently  — 
"  What  is  the  trouble  with  the  boy?  " 

The  question  came  so  quickly,  so  quietly;  be- 
fore she  knew  it  Richarda  answered;  perhaps 
it  was  an  unconscious  relief  to  her  to  speak,  for 
away,  deep  in  her  soul,  she  felt  so  weak.  He 
listened  while  she  told  him  as  little  as  she  could, 
and  that  incoherently;  then,  with  one  question 
and  another,  he  led  her  on,  until  he  understood 
sufficiently,  the  whole  story. 

"  You  see,"  she  said  at  last,  looking  at  him 
anxiously :  "  It  is  a  terrible  question.  Is  it, 
or  is  it  not  right,  to  tell  Mr.  Hutchinson?  It 
will  spoil  his  life,  and  knowing  that  he  is  re- 
sponsible for  that,  will  spoil  Jack's.  And  yet 
he  insists  that  he  will  tell  him  —  that  he  must. 
It  seems  to  me  I  ought  to  know  what  is  right, 
but  I  don't.  I  don't  seem  to  understand  clearly 
about  things  any  more.  I  can't  see  as  Jack 
does  —  that  Mr.  Hutchinson  must  be  told.  He 
says  to  that,  that  I  do  not  know  Mr.  Hutchin- 
son." 

382 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

She  was  very  white  and  wan  —  she  no  longer 
sought  to  evade  the  truth  of  the  situation. 

It  was  such  wistful  pleading. 

"  That's  quite  a  question.  On  the  face  of  it, 
I  should  call  the  idea  absurd,"  said  Dawson,  ab- 
sently. "  But  the  boy  —  it's  such  hard  lines 
for  the  boy.  It  always  has  been.  Child,  did 
you  never  think,  that  sooner  or  later,  the  price 
had  to  be  paid  ?  " 

Her  eyes  filled  with  tears.  "  But  I  thought 
I  was  paying  it." 

"  The  debt  was  not  yours  to  pay." 

"  I  don't  see  that,"  she  said  desperately. 
"  And  yet  now  it  seems  so.  But  I  don't  under- 
stand why.  I  know  it  has  been  all  wrong  for 
Jack.  But  I  could  not  have  done  other  than  I 
did.  I  am  not  a  good  enough  woman  to  be  able 
to  bear  that  Tim  should  know  that  I  knew.  I 
do  not  know  what  I  should  have  done.  And  be- 
sides, do  you  think  that  it  would  have  been  bet- 
ter for  Jack  —  would  Tim  have  loved  him  as  I 
have  loved  him,  if  he  had  looked  at  him  always 
as  the  cause  of  the  sorrow  that  had  come  between 
us  ?  "  She  looked  at  Dawson  in  sudden  defi- 
ance. "  I  have  done  right.  There  was  no 
other  way.  And  it  must  remain  the  way." 

"  In  spite  of  the  fact,  that  every  time  you 
383 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

see  me  with   Homfrey,   you   will  know   that  / 
know,  what  he  does  not  ?  " 

Dawson  spoke  gently ;  his  heart  was  dis- 
tressed for  this  woman.  But  while  she  had 
talked,  he  had  listened  and  thought.  There 
was  only  one  way  to  influence  her;  she  had  no 
fear  of  suffering  —  she  could  never  be  reached 
by  any  appeal  for  the  easing  of  her  own  lot. 

She  looked  at  him,  mute. 

"  Don't  you  see  —  '  the  words  dragged  — 
Dawson  shrank  from  the  task  before  him  — 
"  have  you  never  thought  that  perhaps,  in  all 
this,  you  did  as  you  did,  because,  after  all,  you 
loved  your  own  way  best  —  because  you  were 
determined  at  any  cost,  to  maintain  an  appear- 
ance of  things  which  did  not  really  exist  ?  — 
because  of  your  pride,  which  refused  to  be 
hurt?  " 

Richarda  drew  back. 

But  Dawson  went  on ;  he  had  never  been  in 
battle,  but  he  thought  he  knew  how  men  felt 
when  they  faced  the  black  mouths  of  the  can- 
non. 

"  It  seems  to  me,  that  in  this  whole  matter, 
you  have  seen  solely  one  side  of  the  ques- 
tion." 

"  I  ?  —  only  one  side  of  the  question  ?  " 
384 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

"  Yes,  child.  To  begin  with,  I  think  you 
left  Tim  entirely  out  of  consideration." 

"Tim?" 

"  Yes  —  Tim."  Dawson's  tone  changed. 
"  What  right  have  you  to  deny  nobility  equal 
to  your  own,  to  Tim?  What  right  had  you 
to  withhold  from  him  the  opportunity  of  rising 
to  the  highest  that  was  in  him?  What  right 
had  you  to  assume  that  he  would  act  unworthily 
• — that  he  would  be  less  than  just,  and  willing 
to  bear  the  burden  of  his  own  acts?  Did  you 
never  once  think,  when  you  undertook  to  play 
the  part  of  Providence  with  these  lives,  that  per- 
haps you  did  not  understand  just  what  dis- 
cipline Tim  most  needed  to  bring  out  all  that 
was  finest  in  him?  Did  you  have  no  fears  when 
you  put  out  your  hand  to  arrest  the  just  work- 
ing out  of  the  natural  laws  of  retribution  — 
did  you  have  no  fears  as  to  the  ultimate  vio- 
lence of  re-adjustment  that  your  interference 
would  entail  ?  " 

Richarda  did  not  take  her  eyes  from  Daw- 
son's  face ;  she  felt  as  if  the  walls  of  life's  little 
room  were  slowly  drawing  in  upon  her,  and  she 
was  quietly  watching,  fascinated,  with,  far  back 
in  her  mind,  a  wonder  as  to  whether  it  hurt, 
when  they  crushed  you  close,  closer. 
385 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

"  And  the  boy  Jack  —  had  you  any  right  to 
deny  to  him  the  father  who  is  as  much  his,  as 
he  is  your  boy's?  Was  your  goodness  enough 
to  atone  for  the  cruel  confusion  of  mind  in 
which  this'  boy  has  grown  up  ?  —  with  no  sense 
of  belonging,  or  beginning,  or  ending  any- 
where ;  —  feeling  himself  dishonoured  —  with 
not  even  a  name  that  he  had  a  right  to." 

"  You  mustn't  talk  to  me  like  this,"  said 
Richarda.  "  I  can't  bear  it." 

"  But  you  must  bear  it.  Think  of  that  boy, 
needing  a  father's  strong  guidance  more  than 
most  —  and  above  all  the  guidance  of  a  father 
who  might  have  saved  him,  as  you  never  could, 
from  just  this.  Because  he  would  have  known 
what  you  never  can  know  —  what  was  in  the 
boy's  blood.  And  think  what  it  would  have 
been  to  Homfrey  to  know  that  you  were  ready 
to  work  with  him  for  this  boy.  Think  of  the 
effect  upon  him,  in  all  these  years,  of  knowing 
that  you  made  the  boy  yours,  because  he  was 
his!  And  think  of  the  effect  upon  the  boy  of 
knowing  himself  acknowledged  —  the  shame  of 
it  and  all  —  and  of  knowing  that  behind  him 
there  stood  a  man  —  such  a  man  as  Homfrey 
—  who  owned  him  as  son!  Child,  the  boy 
would  never  have  stood  where  he  stands  to- 
day —  " 

386 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

"  Then  you  think  I  cared  for  nothing  but  — 
you  think  I  was  a  selfish  woman  —  you 
think  —  "  but  Richarda  could  say  no  more. 

Dawson's  eyes  grew  suddenly  misty.  "  Did 
I  say  I  thought  you  were  that  ?  " 

"  But  I  was.  I  am.  I  didn't  mean  to  be, 
though." 

Dawson  turned  his  head  away. 

Then  he  took  her  hand  in  his ;  he  covered  it 
with  his  own  as  a  father  might. 

"  Dear  child,  all  I  want  to  say  is :  Give 
Homfrey  a  chance  —  give  him  a  chance  now  to 
show  you  what's  in  him.  And  give  Jack  a 
chance.  It's  a  man  now  that  has  to  take  hold 
of  him.  It  will  be  a  big  sacrifice  for  you,  but 
you  must  make  it  —  for  Tim's  sake." 

After  Dawson  had  gone,  Richarda  went  to 
Jack's  room ;  she  had  been  away  from  him  a  long 
time  —  all  the  morning  at  Waverley,  and  now 
through  this  long  talk  with  Dawson.  She  felt 
strangely  calm,  though  oppressed  by  an  odd 
idea  that  terrible  things  were  happening  to  that 
outside  self,  Richarda.  Poor  Richarda!  —  she 
was  sorry  for  her. 

She  listened  curiously  to  her  own  conversa- 
tion with  Jack;  sometimes  he  seemed  to  look  at 
387 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

her  in  a  perplexed  way.  When  she  got  up  to 
leave  him  on  the  plea  that  she  must  get  dressed 
for  dinner,  he  detained  her. 

"  I  want  you  to  post  this  for  me  —  "  he  held 
out  a  letter.  "  You  see,  it's  to  Hutchinson.  I 
must  see  him." 

"  Oh  Jack !  " 

But  his  lips  set  in  a  firm  line. 

"  Very  well,"  she  said  faintly. 

She  carried  the  letter  to  her  own  room,  and 
set  it  up  on  the  mantel-piece,  the  address  to  the 
wall. 

As  she  dressed,  she  was  suddenly  conscious 
of  a  passionate  desire  to  look  sweet  to  Tim  to- 
night; when  she  was  ready,  she  studied  herself 
in  the  cheval  glass  —  it  was  a  girlishly  slim  and 
elegant  Richarda  who  eyed  her  there  as  re- 
motely as  a  pictured  woman  might. 

She  heard  Homfrey's  step  in  the  hall,  and  ran 
down  to  meet  him.  "  Oh  Tim !  "  —  she  held  up 
her  lips  to  him. 

He  kissed  her  somewhat  coldly,  wondering 
what  new  mood  was  this  that  dominated  her. 
But  he  could  wait;  it  would  doubtless  develop 
ultimately  to  his  tormenting. 

Yet  he  kissed  her  again,  perhaps  driven  to  do 
so  by  the  remembrance  of  some  things  he  had 
388 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

said  to  Dawson  that  morning,  or  perhaps  merely 
because  she  looked  at  him  with  such  compelling 
sweetness. 

As  he  got  ready  for  dinner,  he  watched  her 
from  his  window ;  she  was  in  the  garden,  playing 
ball  with  Dick  like  any  child.  There  was  irre- 
pressible youth  in  Richarda  —  it  seemed  to  him 
often  as  if  an  arresting  finger  had  been  laid 
upon  certain  phases  and  moods  of  her  girlhood. 
Marriage  and  motherhood  had  left  her  curi- 
ously untouched  in  some  directions  in  which  they 
affected  the  usual  woman  most  obviously.  And 
she  was  distinctly  the  reverse  of  the  type  of 
woman  who  is  first  absorbed  by  her  husband, 
and  later,  by  her  sons. 

In  his  home  she  ruled  —  he  never  crossed  his 
door-step  without  feeling  that  he  entered  her 
domain.  She  ruled  there  as  a  determining  per- 
sonality, yet  she  claimed  nothing. 

Homfrey  smiled ;  after  all,  it  was  a  not  insig- 
nificant part  of  that  for  which  a  man  loved  a 
woman  —  the  luxury  of  feeling  himself  the  vic- 
tim of  her  caprices. 

Late  in  her  own  room  that  night,  after  she  had 
parted  with  her  husband,  Richarda  toyed  with 
the  process   of   settling  herself  to  sleep.     She 
389 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

went  back  to  her  dressing-table  and  began  to 
do  up  her  hair  again,  and  then  smiled  at  her 
own  foolishness.  She  wished  she  had  not  un- 
dressed, so  that  she  might  see  just  how  she  had 
looked  to  Homfrey  through  that  long,  happy 
evening. 

Unconsciously,  she  was  clinging  to  that  rem- 
nant of  girlhood  which  Homfrey  perceived  in 
her,  but  which  she  felt  often  of  late  was  soon  to 
pass.  She  did  not  want  to  understand  the  pas- 
sion that  had  entered  into  her  after  Dawson  had 
left  her;  for  once,  and  as  she  felt  vaguely,  for 
the  last  time,  she  had  freed  herself  as  her  na- 
ture demanded ;  she  had  taken  up  her  life  again 
where  she  had  left  it  when  Minnie  Barstow  en- 
tered into  it ;  —  for  once,  Homfrey  had  seen 
her  and  would  always  be  able  to  remember  her 
• —  as  she  might  have  been.  Unconscious  of  the 
meaning  of  her  mood,  she  had  sought  to  bind 
him  to  herself  with  all  those  arts  of  allurement 
old  as  the  hearts  of  men  and  women.  For  some- 
thing terrible  loomed  before  her;  cold,  cruel, 
separating  as  death.  It  willed  to  take  Homfrey 
from  her  —  to  destroy  forever  the  beauty  and 
the  unity  of  their  love. 

What  had  Dawson  said?  —  that  she  had  en- 
deavoured at  any  cost,  to  maintain  an  appear- 
390 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

ance  of  things  which  did  not  really  exist,  because 
her  pride  refused  to  be  hurt ! 

"  What  a  lie ! "  she  said  aloud.  As  if  her 
pride  had  not  suffered !  But  Dawson  could 
never  understand  that.  It  did  not  matter. 

But  her  tears  came  suddenly ;  it  was  such  hu- 
miliation to  her  that  Dawson  should  know ;  it  was 
cruel  that  her  secret  could  not  remain  her  own. 

But  now  Maxwell  knew !  —  yes,  but  that  was 
different.  Maxwell  lived  a  life  which  had  no 
connection  with  hers  and  her  husband's. 

Yet  the  more  she  argued,  the  more  troubled 
she  became.  She  knew  that  before  now,  no  excuse 
would  have  seemed  to  her  sufficient  to  induce  her 
to  speak  to  another  of  what  concerned  her  hus- 
band. 

What  was  happening  to  her  ?  —  she  felt  a 
sudden  terror  as  a  perception  flashed  upon  her 
that  everything  was  moving  to  force  her  in  one 
direction  —  that  she  herself  was  weakening  — 
that  something  that  she  had  conquered  all  these 
years  was  at  last  getting  the  mastery  of  her. 

She  was  so  tired ;  it  had  been  an  endless  day ; 
she  had  had  no  time  to  think  calmly  —  not  even 
while  returning  from  Waverley  in  the  train. 
That  poor  Maxwell!  It  all  sounded  very  long 
ago  as  she  tried  to  recall  her  talk  with  him.  It 
391 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

was  strange  that  she  had  mustered  the  courage 
to  go  to  see  him ;  the  reason  was  rather  insuffi- 
cient, she  thought  now.  Yet  only  this  morning 
it  appeared  to  her  overwhelming. 

What  right  had  Dawson  to  interfere?  If  she 
had  asked  his  advice,  he  might  have  had  some 
justification  for  his  attack  upon  her.  She 
would  have  to  reckon  with  him  in  the  future, 
but  she  was  not  going  to  think  of  that  now. 

She  was  so  tired ;  she  must  go  to  sleep,  and  in 
the  morning  she  would  be  able  to  understand  all 
that  had  happened  to-day ;  she  would  know  what 
to  do.  These  troublesome  questions  would  ad- 
just themselves  if  they  were  quietly  left  alone; 
it  was  getting  in  a  hurry  to  do  something,  that 
led  to  complications. 

She  sat  down  —  she  was  trembling.  But 
that  was  not  to  be  wondered  at;  she  reminded 
herself  that  she  was  not  a  strong  woman,  and 
lately  she  had  been  continually  over-taxed.  She 
looked  aimlessly  about  the  room  —  Oh,  there 
was  that  letter  to  Hutchinson !  —  she  had  not 
posted  it. 

She  could  not  take  her  eyes  from  it;  it  fas- 
cinated her.  That  letter  meant  more  trouble. 
She  must  post  it  —  but  how  could  she  ?  What 
would  happen?  And  what  was  right?  —  the 
392 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

longer  she  thought  about  that  the  more  hope- 
lessly confused  she  became. 

Poor  Jack!  If  he  only  had  someone  to  ad- 
vise him  who  knew  —  No !  —  she  pulled  herself 
together  sharply.  Jack  must  be  a  man  —  must 
stand  on  his  own  feet.  Besides,  he  had  her;  she 
was  not  going  to  desert  him. 

But  Hutchinson  —  What  would  he  do  when 
he  knew  ?  —  she  wished  she  could  keep  that  ques- 
tion out  of  her  head.  At  any  rate,  she  must 
not  post  that  letter  until  she  had  had  time  and 
quiet  to  think  the  matter  out.  It  was  easy  to 
make  life  unnecessarily  difficult;  everyone  did 
that  —  Maxwell,  Dawson,  and  now  Jack.  Ten 
years  from  now  all  this  would  be  settled,  and 
would  seem  no  doubt  of  comparative  unimpor- 
tance. 

Would  it  ?  —  a  question  like  this  ? 

She  looked  at  her  bed,  all  smooth  and  white; 
many  a  night,  at  this  hour  she  had  lain  there  un- 
troubled. But  to-night  she  was  too  restless  to 
sleep. 

What  had  Dawson  said  ?  —  that  she  had  left 
Tim  entirely  out  of  consideration?  What  an 
incredible  thing  to  accuse  her  of! 

But  that  was  not  all  —  he  had  said  many 
other  things ;  she  beat  the  remembrance  of  them 
away  from  her. 

393 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

Yet  she  knew,  and  that  was  why  she  faced  the 
night  sleepless,  that  the  futile  pretences  behind 
which  she  had  barricaded  herself  were  giving 
way;  that  the  fight  was  upon  her.  And  she 
was  not  to  conquer.  The  ideals  for  which  she 
had  sacrificed  her  happiness  were  not  to  triumph ; 
they  had  been  wrong  —  selfish  and  distorted. 
Dawson  had  said  so. 

It  was  cruel !  —  she  dropped  her  face  in  her 
hands  and  began  to  cry.  It  was  to  be  taken 
from  her  —  that  which  she  had  loved  above  all 
else.  No;  it  was  not  to  be  taken  from  her  — 
she  herself  must  give  it  up.  It  seemed  that  she 
had  not  believed  in  Tim  as  another  woman  might 
have  —  that  she  had  not  trusted  his  sense  of 
justice  —  that  she  had  denied  to  him  the  great 
opportunity. 

And  Jack?  —  she  had  ignored  his  claim  — 
she  had  appraised  her  devotion  as  fit  equivalent 
of  that  which  she  refused  him.  If  she  had  been 
true  and  unafraid  —  but  she  had  been  a  coward. 

She  —  a  coward  I  Would  Tim  think  that? 
Would  all  that  she  had  done  mean  nothing  to 
him? 

Ah !  She  had  always  known  that  it  was  some 
day  coming  to  this  —  away,  deep  in  her  heart, 
she  had  always  known  that  there  was  a  time  set 
394 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

—  but  she  had  held  it  as  far  away  from  her  as 
the  thought  of  eternity.  She  had  spent  her  life 
fighting  the  conviction. 

At  last  she  understood. 

She  was  to  tell  Tim.  And  she  was  to  tell  him 
to-night.  Yes,  to-night.  It  seemed  to  her 
that  there  could  never  be  a  to-morrow.  She 
must  not  wait  a  moment  —  she  got  up  from  her 
chair  —  then  she  sat  down  again,  and  put  her 
hand  wearily  to  her  head.  She  wondered  con- 
fusedly why  there  was  any  need  of  such  hurry. 
She  would  like  to  wait  until  she  felt  —  but  then 
she  began  to  sob  —  terrible  sobs  —  the  harsh 
sound  of  them  frightened  her;  she  hushed  her- 
self violently. 

But  they  began  again;  she  could  not  still 
them,  and  that  was  Tim  knocking  —  what  was 
she  to  do? 

She  knew  —  she  opened  the  door. 

"  Richarda,  dearest,  what  is  the  matter?  I 
heard  you  —  what  is  it?  " 

The  sight  of  him  stunned  her  into  calmness. 
"  Haven't  you  gone  to  bed?  "  she  asked  in  a  dry 
whisper. 

"  No.     I've  been  reading.     But  —  " 

He  must  not  look  at  her  like  that  —  must  not 
speak  to  her  like  that.  For  he  did  so,  believing 
395 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

her  what  she  was  not  —  believing  her  true  to 
him.  And  she  had  not  been  true  —  she  had 
given  him  no  chance  — .  She  was  sobbing  again 

—  those  strange  sobs  that  hurt  her  —  and  Hom- 
frey  — 

"  No,  Tim !  "  She  held  him  away  from  her. 
"  Tim,  I've  got  to  tell  you  something.  It's 
about  —  "  she  paused,  striving  for  calmness  — 
"  it's  about  Jack." 

Homfrey  stood  back. 

"  You  —  you  must  help  him.     He  needs  you 

—  he's  in  great  trouble.     I  have  not  been  good 
to  him,  Tim." 

Tell  him!  —  it  was  the  single  cry  in  her  ears ; 
she  struggled  against  it,  and  with  it,  and  for  it. 
But  the  words  would  not  come.  After  all,  why 
should  they?  She  had  only  to  say  to  her  hus- 
band :  "  I  love  you,  and  I  will  let  this  boy  go," 
and  all  would  be  well;  there  would  be  no  more 
questions  for  her  to  answer. 

But  in  the  instant  of  this  thought,  she  said: 
"  Tim,  listen  to  me  —  and  help  me.  It's  all 
terrible,  and  cruel,  and  wrong.  And  I  have 
made  it  so.  And  Jack — " 

"  Don't  speak  of  that  boy  to  me,  Charda." 

"  I  must  speak  of  him."  She  was  suddenly 
calm.  "  I  want  to  tell  you  what  he  has  done 
396 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

before  I  tell  you  any  more,  for  there  is  more. 
But  before  you  hear  it,  I  want  you  to  know  the 
worst  of  Jack.  I  want  you  to  know  before  — 
not  afterwards." 

"  The  boy  is  no  concern  of  mine,  except  that 
he  is  a  torment  to  you,  and  as  I  say,  Charda  —  " 

"  Tim  —  you  must  listen  to  me." 

Homfrey  sat  down.  "  I  see  you  are  as  de- 
termined as  you  always  have  been  in  this  mat- 
ter," he  said  coldly. 

She  hardly  seemed  to  hear  him ;  she  began  to 
speak  at  once,  and  quietly,  as  if  in  continuation 
of  her  thoughts. 

"  You  see,  when  I  sent  Jack  away  to  college, 
I  was  glad,  after  a  while,  to  feel  that  I  was 
going  to  be  free  of  him.  I  wanted  just  you 
and  Dick.  I  tried  to  stop  thinking  about  him 
—  I  let  him  feel  that  I  had  loosened  my  hold  of 
him.  When  he  needed  me  most,  I  let  him  under- 
stand—  well,  what  he  thought  was  that  I 
wanted  to  be  rid  of  him." 

There  was  a  muttered  exclamation  from 
Homfrey. 

"  And  he  came  under  other  influences  —  not 

good  influences.     Tim  —  I  don't  know  how  — 

you  see,  there  was  a  girl  there  —  she  is  not  a 

good   girl  —  and    Jack  —  "    she    stopped ;   the 

397 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

look  in  her  eyes  demanded  of  Homfrey  that  he 
should  help  her. 

"  In  short,  I  am  to  understand  the  common 
story,  where  there  is  a  girl,  not  a  good  girl,  and 
a  boy,  not  a  — " 

"  You  are  not  to  understand  that."  Ri- 
charda  spoke  in  a  tone  that  evoked  a  flash  in 
Homfrey's  face.  "  There  is  everything  in  this 
story  to  make  it  uncommon.  Jack  is  free  of  the 
girl.  But  she  has  married  his  best  friend,  who 
believes  her  good,  and  Jack  —  it  has  made  him 
ill.  And  now  he  says  he  must  tell  Hutchinson." 

Homfrey  got  up.  "  Charda,  let  us  under- 
stand each  other,  here  and  now.  To-morrow, 
that  boy  will  leave  my  house  —  and  he  will  leave 
it  for  all  time.  You  have  not  hesitated  to  set 
him  and  his  interests  above  me  and  mine.  You 
brought  him,  the  son  of  God  knows  whom,  into 
our  home  —  you  insisted  upon  treating  him  as 
if  he  were  my  son  —  you  have  defied  me  at  every 
point  where  he  has  been  concerned,  and  yet  to- 
night, you  tell  me  this  story.  You  forget  that 
I  told  you,  years  ago,  that  this  boy's  blood 
would  tell,  and  now  —  " 

"  Hush !  "  Richarda's  voice  was  like  the  si- 
lent falling  of  snow  —  "  You  must  not  say  that, 
Tim.  Because  —  that  is  what  I  have  to  tell 
398 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

you  —  I  mean  what  I  have  to  tell  you  —  about 
— about  —  this  boy,  whom  I  have  treated  as 
if  —  "  but  now  her  voice  shook  helplessly ;  her 
fear  was  such  as  she  had  never  dreamed  possible 
to  her  —  "  Tim  —  "  she  caught  Homf rey's  arm 
—  "  be  good  to  me,  Tim  —  don't  be  angry  — 
because  if  —  if  I  have  treated  Jack  as  though 
he  were  your  son  —  Oh  Tim  !  —  that  was  be- 
cause he  is  yours  —  he  is  your  son." 

She  continued  looking  at  Homfrey,  but  she 
did  not  see  his  face ;  a  thick  darkness  came  upon 
her.  And  the  sound  in  her  ears  was  like  the 
breaking  of  her  heart. 

"  Charda." 

She  tried  to  look  up. 

"  Charda." 

"  But  it  is  true,"  she  whispered. 

"  Is  it?     Then  I  should  like  to  ask  —  " 

"  Yes,  of  course,  Tim."  There  were  tears 
in  her  eyes  now.  "  You  see,  Minnie  Bars- 
tow— " 

"Minnie  Barstow?" 

"  Oh  yes.  And  Mr.  Dawson  —  why,  he 
knows." 

"  Dawson  knows  what,  Richarda  ?" 

"  Tim  —  don't  you  see  that  Jack  —  Oh,  now 
that  you  know  —  " 

399 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

Homfrey  was  silent;  she  saw  a  change  in  his 
face. 

"Don't  you  see?  —  "  she  pleaded:  "That 
is  why  he  is  so  like  you  —  don't  you  under- 
stand —  " 

Homfrey  held  up  his  hand ;  she  realized,  that 
at  this  moment,  he  could  not  bear  another  word. 
But  she  could  not  see  him  suffer  alone.  She 
knelt  beside  him. 

"  Oh  Tim,"  she  moaned,  "  I  have  not  been 
fair  to  you.  I  have  not  loved  you  as  I  might 
have.  But  I  did  not  understand.  I  wanted  you 
never  to  know.  I  wanted  to  think  you  every- 
thing that  I  had  believed  you  were.  I  could 
not  bear  anything  else.  But  that  was  all  wrong. 
I  kept  you  from  Jack  —  it  was  all  selfish.  But 
now  —  you  will  —  " 

Homfrey  set  her  back  from  him ;  his  face  was 
drawn  —  it  semed  to  her  that  he  grew  old  as  she 
looked  at  him. 

"  I  must  understand,"  he  said  coldly.  "  Just 
now,  you  spoke  of  —  Minnie  Barstow." 

She  turned  suddenly  faint. 

"  Tim  —  don't !     I  can't  bear  it." 

The  sound  of  that  name  upon  his  lips  —  this 
was  the  agony  from  which  she  had  shrunk  — 
which   she  had   spent  years   of  passionate  en- 
deavour in  seeking  to  escape. 
400 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

"  I  can't."  She  sank  into  a  chair.  "  You 
mustn't  ask  me."  Her  eyes  flamed.  "  Don't 
you  understand  ?  —  there  are  some  things  that 
are  impossible." 

Homfrey  turned  his  face  from  her. 

She  looked  at  him,  and  her  feeling  of  weak- 
ness passed ;  she  felt  a  strange  elation.  So  high 
ran  the  tide  of  her  anger  against  him.  And  it 
was  good  to  feel  this  storm  in  her  blood ;  she 
luxuriated  in  it,  as  one  free  to  take  deep  breaths 
of  life  after  black-winged  suffocation  has  hov- 
ered close.  It  was  well  that  he  knew  —  well 
that  he  understood  at  last  what  high  right  she 
had  to  anger.  Minnie  Barstow!  —  her  ears 
ached  with  the  sound  of  that  name  as  he  had  said 
it.  How  dare  he  speak  it  to  her?  —  and  there 
he  sat,  unmoved,  after  she  had  told  him  —  such 
a  thing  as  this  ! 

To  say  nothing  —  to  offer  not  one  word!  — 
she  felt  choked;  with  a  sharp  movement  she 
stood  up,  and  went  to  the  open  window.  It 
must  be  long  after  midnight,  but  the  moon  was 
shining  somewhere,  and  the  garden  in  its  misty 
radiance  looked  as  if  the  stars  had  taken  root  in 
earth,  and  were  bringing  forth  silvered  blade 
and  leaf  and  bud.  And  the  air  was  sweet,  so 
heavenly  sweet  that  something  stirred  in  her  — 
401 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

something  that  she  had  no  wish  just  then  to  feel. 
She  drew  back ;  this  was  no  moment  to  look  out 
on  a  scene  like  that;  she  was  not  seeking  poetic 
inspiration. 

"  Charda !  "  She  turned  with  a  start ;  Hom- 
frey  was  standing  beside  her.  "  I  think  you 
must  see  that  having  told  me  what  you  have, 
you  must  tell  me  more.  Minnie  Barstow  — " 

Her  gesture  was  sufficient. 

"  I  beg  your  pardon,"  he  said  simply ;  he 
turned  to  the  door. 

There  was  nothing  to  say ;  Richarda  was  quite 
clear  as  to  that,  yet  she  caught  herself  wonder- 
ing how  he  was  to  know  what  he  rightly  desired 
to  know,  if  she  did  not  tell  him.  Did  she  wish 
Dawson  —  but  she  had  no  time  to  think  that 
out.  For  Homfrey  was  going;  that  he  could 
leave  her  now  implied  definite  acknowledgment 
of  what  at  this  moment,  she  most  unreasonably 
desired  him  to  ignore,  and  his  manner  suggested 
some  decision,  quick,  irrevocable.  Even  now  he 
was  master;  she  had  a  confused  sense  of  herself 
as  the  one  in  disgrace.  It  was  intolerable  — 
cruel. 

Yet  before  he  reached  the  door  she  was  beside 
him. 

"Tim —  you  musn't  leave  me  like  that.  I 
402 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

can't  bear  it.  I  know  —  I  must  tell  you  —  no 
one  else  can.  But  it's  hard.  Don't  you  know 
that?  " 

He  said  nothing  —  he  only  looked  at  her  in 
that  strange  way ;  it  would  be  so  much  easier  if 
he  would  say  one  tender  word  to  her.  But  no! 
• —  he  stood  off  as  if  she  did  not  belong  to  him. 
A  sob  rose  in  her  throat.  But  she  must  not 
think  of  all  that  now ;  there  would  be  time 
enough.  She  must  do  the  thing  she  had  re- 
solved upon  without  flinching.  Besides  —  there 
was  Jack. 

"  I'll  tell  you,"  she  began  in  a  voice  that  she 
could  not  keep  unshaken.  "  It  happened  when 
you  went  away  —  long  ago  —  you  remember. 
She  came  to  see  me  just  before  I  was  going  to 
New  York  to  meet  you. 

"  She  told  me  there  had  been  the  child,  but  she 
had  not  known  where  you  were.  And  I  think  — 
in  a  way  —  she  was  proud,  and  she  was  able 
through  a  friend  to  keep  anyone  from  knowing. 
She  was  sent  here  as  a  manager  in  Heusel's,  and 
• —  one  day,  she  saw  you.  Then  she  found  out 
about  me,  and  when  she  had  a  chance  to  marry, 
she  wanted  to  make  sure  that  she  could  do  so 
without  any  fear  of  her  husband's  ever  hearing 
about  the  child.  And  yet  she  wanted  to  be  sure 
403 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

that  he  would  be  cared  for — "  Richarda  sighed, 
and  paused  a  moment  — "  and  she  thought  he 
would  be  if  he  was  brought  up  in  —  our  home. 
So  she  asked  me  to  take  him.  She  said  that  if  I 
did  not,  she  would  go  to  you."  She  waited 
again;  there  was  frightened  appeal  in  the 
glance  she  gave  her  husband.  "  I  took  him, 
Tim." 

And  still  Homfrey  said  nothing;  he  did  not 
even  look  at  her.  It  was  more  than  she  knew 
how  to  bear  —  she  hid  her  face  in  her  hands. 

The  door  closed ;  he  was  gone.  But  presently 
he  would  come  back ;  he  would  tell  her  all  that 
she  was  longing  to  hear.  It  was  terribly  hard 
for  him  —  she  understood  that  —  she  would  not 
forget  it.  He  was  a  proud  man ;  he  would  feel 
humiliated  in  all  sorts  of  ways  — perhaps  she 
had  not  sufficiently  realised  that. 

He  did  not  come.  She  made  a  great  effort  to 
be  calm;  she  must  give  him  time;  she  must  try 
to  understand  just  how  this  revelation  was  af- 
fecting him.  But  the  longer  she  reasoned,  the 
more  confused  and  frightened  she  became;  the 
surer  she  grew  that  her  part  in  the  matter  might 
not  recommend  itself  to  him.  She  began  to  cry 
—  her  mind  closed  to  everything  but  a  hopeless 
sense  of  her  own  misery.  He  was  here,  under 
404 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

the  roof  of  their  home,  but  away  from  her, 
thinking  about  that  Minnie  Barstow,  and  this 
boy  Jack,  his  son.  It  was  cruel. 

She  waited  still,  her  ear  strained  for  a  sound. 
Another  hour  passed  —  another ;  she  threw  her- 
self upon  her  bed.  She  had  cried  until  she 
could  cry  no  more;  she  felt  herself  grow  slowly 
numb  —  then  she  slept. 

When  she  awoke  it  was  to  an  instant  sense  of 
disaster,  as  if  something  had  fallen  in  ruins 
about  her  during  the  night.  But  she  did  not 
stop  to  think  of  that  now ;  she  threw  on  her 
dressing-gown  and  hurried  to  Jack's  room.  He 
was  awake  and  greeted  her  with  a  wan  smile;  it 
frightened  her  to  see  how  haggard  he  looked. 

"  Oh  Jack,  you  haven't  slept,"  she  said  re- 
proachfully. 

"  Yes  —  a  little."  He  looked  at  her.  "  Did 
you  ?  Because,  I  thought  —  or  did  I  dream 
that?  " 

Her  lip  quivered.  "  You  dreamt  it,  Jack." 
She  tried  to  smile. 

But  he  watched  the  shaking  of  her  hand  as 
she  poured  his  medicine  into  the  glass,  and  he 
knew.  That  was  his  doing  —  what  he  had 
heard;  his  doing,  the  suffering  that  showed  in 
her  face.  He  had  no  excuse  for  getting  better ; 
405 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

the  only  decent  thing  he  could  have  done  was  to 
die. 

"  You  shall  have  your  breakfast  presently," 
she  said  —  she  laid  her  hand  lightly  on  his  fore- 
head. An  impulse  dominated  her  to  make  Jack 
feel  himself  hers  more  surely  than  ever  before 
• —  while  she  yet  had  time. 

"  No  Lady,  I'll  get  up,"  he  protested,  weakly 
remonstrant. 

She  looked  over  her  shoulder  at  him.  "  No." 
There  was  such  sweetness  of  command  in  her 
tone  that  he  laughed  —  and  could  have  wept. 

Richarda  went  back  to  her  room,  and  began 
mechanically  to  dress.  Another  day  had  begun ; 
she  must  live  it  through  before  her  household 
with  dignity.  Her  pride  rose  and  stiffened  the 
limp  blood  in  her  veins  —  she  would  show  her- 
self strong. 

But  all  the  while  she  was  listening  —  listen- 
ing. 

When  Homfrey  left  his  wife  he  went  back  to 
his  room  and  sat  down  as  he  had  been  sitting 
when  he  heard  the  sound  which  made  him  won- 
der, and  then  feel  alarm.  He  picked  up  the 
book  he  had  thrown  hurriedly  on  the  table; 
straightened  the  pages  carefully,  and  closed  it. 
406 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

Then  he  sat  still,  looking  before  him  with  the 
gaze  of  a  man  seeking  to  identify  something  a 
long  way  off. 

This  —  and  that ;  slowly  —  painfully,  one 
memory  after  another  assumed  shape,  substance. 

That  girl ! 

In  all  these  years  he  had  hardly  thought  once 
of  her.  She  had  come  into  his  life  for  a  mo- 
ment, and  gone  out  of  it  along  with  other  experi- 
ences upon  which  marriage  had  turned  for  him 
the  key. 

And  yet  —  she  had  borne  him  a  child ! 

A  strange  feeling  of  nauseation  unsteadied 
him  —  he  gripped  his  chair  hard.  And  then  he 
found  himself  recalling  the  sound  of  a  falling 
rain-drop  on  the  window-sill  —  a  sound  reaching 
him  at  this  crisis  from  those  far-off  childish 
days  when  it  had  tortured  him  into  restless 
wakefulness,  with  the  wonder  whether  it  would 
ever  stop.  He  looked  at  the  palms  of  his  hands 
—  they  were  wet,  just  as  they  used  to  get  then 
with  the  fear  that  that  rain-drop  never  would 
stop  falling. 

That  this  should  have  happened  to  him,  Hom- 

f rey !  —  it   was    intolerable.      He    felt    with   an 

acute  sense  of  resentment  that  there  was  little 

connection  between  himself  and  the  boy  of  his 

407 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

reckless  student  days,  and  yet  this  Nemesis  of  a 
forgotten  folly  had  dogged  his  unsuspecting 
steps  all  these  long  years,  to  lay  clutch  upon 
him  now ;  to  humiliate  him  in  his  own  sight ;  to 
overwhelm  him  with  contempt,  disgust,  for  the 
boy  who  had  been  as  surely  Timothy  Homfrey 
then,  as  he  was  Timothy  Homfrey  now. 

He  lighted  a  cigar  —  smoked  it  for  a  few 
moments ;  then  threw  it  far  out  of  the  window, 
and  with  his  hands  clenched  began  to  pace  the 
room.  But  it  was  like  a  cage  to  him ;  he  would 
get  out  and  walk. 

What  good  would  that  do  ?  —  a  man  could 
not  walk  away  from  a  fact  like  this. 

It  was  there,  beside  him,  grinning  at  him  as 
it  had  grinned  all  these  years  of  the  life  which 
he  had  lived  with  a  certain  subtle  consciousness 
of  a  temperamental  elegance  above  that  of  his 
neighbours. 

That  girl!  —  a  pretty,  saucy,  common  piece 
of  flesh  and  blood  —  no  more,  no  less.  He  set 
his  teeth  hard.  And  she  had  seen  him,  here  in 
the  town  where  he  had  so  soon  achieved  a  name 
for  himself  —  she  had  looked  at  him  with  the 
thought  of  the  bond  between  them,  while  he 
passed,  unsuspecting;  she  had  made  her  plan  in 
that  moment,  perhaps,  to  hand  over  to  him  the 
boy, — 

408 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

He  drew  back,  as  from  a  fire  that  scorched. 

That  boy  !  —  he  halted  in  his  uneven  tread. 

The  boy  was  here  —  under  his  roof  —  Minnie 
Barstow's  boy. 

But  he  was  called  Homfrey. 

He  sat  down  —  he  felt  such  strange  exhaus- 
tion. 

Presently,  with  a  great  effort,  he  began  to  fit 
together  his  memories  of  the  boy;  he  saw  him 
again  as  the  door  had  opened  to  let  him  in, 
eighteen  years  before  —  an  innocent  baby,  seek- 
ing in  Richarda's  eyes  the  only  home  he  knew. 

Richarda!  —  he  sprang  to  his  feet  —  he 
reached  the  door.  But  he  turned  back.  Ri- 
charda was  set  immeasurable  spaces  away  from 
him. 

That  outcast  child  had  been  his ;  he  had  not 
known  it,  but  she  had,  and  she  had  opened 
her  arms  to  it.  He  recalled  that  first  scene  im- 
mediately ;  he  could  see  his  wife  again  in  her 
girlish  grace,  with  the  boy  clinging  to  her;  her 
face  seemed  still  to  plead  for  him  as  it  had  done 
then.  The  blood  rushed  to  his  finger-tips ;  he 
shrank  from  the  shame  which  assailed  him. 

But  he  was  no  snivelling  coward ;  this  matter 
was  his,  and  he  must  go  through  with  it  to  the 
end,  whatever  that  might  be.  So  with  infinite 
409 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

patience  he  persevered,  and  traced  Jack  from 
one  scene  to  another;  it  struck  him  for  the  first 
time,  that  the  boy's  connection  with  him  was  set 
in  a  series  of  definite  appearances,  from  that 
memorable  one  in  Richarda's  room  after  the 
birth  of  Dick,  to  others,  less  dramatic  perhaps, 
but  curiously  significant  to  him  now,  until  he 
came  to  that  night  when  Jack  and  he  had  at 
last  openly  faced  each  other  in  mutual  repudia- 
tion and  contempt.  And  that  boy,  whom  he  had 
taunted,  the  more  bitterly  because  he  had  felt 
himself  drawn  to  him  more  strongly  than  ever 
before,  by  an  intolerable  fascination  which  al- 
lured and  mocked  him  —  that  boy  had  been  his 
son! 

An  overwhelming  desire  to  see  him  —  to  look 
at  him  critically  —  to  balance  coolly  points  of 
resemblance,  swept  him  for  a  moment  nearly  off 
his  feet.  It  had  maddened  him,  time  and  again, 
to  notice  Jack's  easy  assumption  of  his  little 
personalities  of  speech  and  gesture  —  it  was  a 
species  of  impudence  peculiarly  offensive  to  him. 
But  those  intimate  tricks  of  resemblance  were 
the  boy's  birthright  —  as  much  as  the  colour  of 
his  eyes,  the  shape  of  his  hands. 

There  was  Dick,  whose  lack  of  resemblance  to 
him  he  had  found  so  irritating;  in  him,  some 
410 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

strong  leit-motif  from  other  blood  dominated  at 
the  expense  of  the  more  complicated,  elusive 
strains  which  had  made  his  own  nature  so  fasci- 
nating a  study  to  Homfrey. 

It  was  incredible  that  he  had  not  understood. 
But  he  had  not ;  that  fact  stared  him  in  the  face, 
irrefragable  evidence  of  a  blindness  in  himself 
which  seemed  inconceivable. 

But  there  were  depths  before  him  yet  to  be 
waded  through ;  he  went  on.  In  imagination,  he 
set  before  him  the  slight,  eager,  boyish  figure ;  he 
looked  at  it  long ;  he  re-read  in  it  his  own  young 
history,  but  with  a  crueller  meaning.  The  sins 
of  the  fathers  —  even  unto  the  third  and  fourth 
generation  —  his  soul  was  filled  with  the  bitter- 
ness of  a  truth  as  everlasting  as  the  hills.  Not 
for  a  moment  did  he  seek  to  escape  responsibility 
for  this  boy's  character  —  it  was  of  the  very 
stuff  of  his  own.  But  Jack  was  to  pay  the 
price.  For  him  there  was  to  be  no  smooth  way 
of  escape.  For  Homfrey  understood,  as  clearly 
as  Richarda  had  understood,  the  shame  of  Jack's 
position.  Either  in  his  own  tormented  con- 
sciousness, or  in  the  wreck  of  this  man  Hutch- 
inson's  happiness,  the  boy  was  doomed  to  pay 
for  the  sin  of  his  father. 

The  darkness  of  night  showed  stealthily  grey 
411 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

at  the  window ;  it  was  dawn,  and  he  realised  that 
he  had  sat  for  hours,  unstirring.  But  he  had 
hardly  yet  begun  to  think  — he  knew  that.  He 
felt  himself  without  strength  to  approach  the 
agony  that  was  before  him. 

Richarda !  —  he  repeated  her  name  —  as 
helpless  as  some  outcast,  prostrate  at  the  feet  of 
intercessory  Virgin.  It  seemed  to  him  that  his 
life  henceforth  would  be  but  an  attempt  to  un- 
derstand what  she  had  done,  and  why  she  had 
done  it. 

He  had  spent  years  in  analysing  her  as  a  deli- 
cately intricate  human,  specimen;  he  understood 
now  that  she  was  one  with  the  mystery  of  Love, 
rarely  apprehended  of  man  in  its  ultimate 
beauty.  He  looked  back  over  those  torturing 
years  in  which  she  had  kept  silence  —  because 
she  loved  him  —  and  he  was  dumb. 

He  heard  again  her  agonised  cry,  in  that 
scene  which  it  had  baffled  him  to  understand 
even  when  it  was  explained  as  due  to  the  phan- 
tasies of  a  mind  weakened  temporarily  by  des- 
perate illness: 

"  Tim,  don't  let  me  speak.  I  musn't.  I 
musn't." 

She  was  set  high  above  him ;  but  she  was  his 
wife,  and  his  heart  began  to  make  cry  for  the 
412 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

woman  beloved.  He  could  not  bear  this  alone. 
But  he  could  never  ask  her  to  forgive.  Besides 
all  that  was  in  the  past,  there  was  new  suffering 
before  her,  in  the  readjusting  of  his  relation  to 
Jack. 

And  there  was  his  son  Dick  to  be  faced  —  he 
had  not  thought  of  that.  What  would  his  po- 
sition be  henceforth  in  his  own  house,  in  and 
out  of  which  he  had  gone  so  light  of  step  and  of 
conscience. 

It  all  rested  with  Richarda.  He  was  clinging 
to  the  thought  of  her  now,  as  the  child  Jack  had 
clung  to  her  those  long  years  ago. 

He  had  made  her  his  wife  in  the  arrogance 
of  his  strength  to  bear  with  distinction  the  expe- 
riences that  marriage  might  bring  to  him ;  until 
last  night  he  had  been  secure  in  the  faith  that  he 
had  done  so.  He  had  believed  himself  to  have 
controlled  a  difficult  situation  with  infinite  skill 
and  broad-minded  justice  —  few  men  would 
have  permitted  to  their  wives  such  independence 
of  action  and  such  unlimited  right  to  personal 
opinion  as  he  had  granted  to  Richarda. 

But  in  the  light  of  this  revelation  that  com- 
placent view  of  their  relation  underwent  bewil- 
dering change.  After  the  manner  of  men,  he 
had  married  a  maid,  and  straightway,  she  had 
413 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

taken  his  life  into  her  keeping,  as  hers,  to 
fashion  it  at  whatsoever  cost  to  herself,  into  a 
thing  of  integrity. 

But  why  did  she  not  come  to  him  now  ?  — 
how  could  she  stay  away  when  he  needed  her  as 
he  had  never  needed  her  before? 

He  had  had  to  leave  her ;  she  must  have  under- 
stood that  his  sense  of  shame  and  unworthiness 
had  been  such  as  to  drive  him  from  her. 

He  tried  at  last  to  sleep,  but  his  mind  would 
not  stop  remembering.  How  insanely  jealous 
he  had  been  of  Jack,  and  all  the  time  her  love 
for  the  boy  had  been  the  highest  manifestation 
possible  of  her  love  for  him. 

It  was  hopelessly  beyond  his  understanding. 
Marriage  to  her  had  been  the  indissoluble  bind- 
ing of  spirit  with  spirit,  and  she  had  maintained 
the  beauty  of  her  ideal  unscathed. 

And  this  was  the  woman  he  had  married  with 
light  jest  of  love  upon  his  lips ! 

"  Charda !  "  he  moaned,  broken  of  soul.  Her 
life  had  been  like  a  poem,  a  matter  of  the  noblest 
imagining,  and  he  had  lived  his  beside  it,  un- 
hearing. 

The  household  day  had  begun  again ;  he  could 
hear  the  servants  busy  about  their  duties.     His 
face  had  grown  old  and  worn;  he  hardly  recog- 
414 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

nised  it  in  the  glass  as  his.  He  had  a  sudden 
feeling  that  to-day  he  would  give  some  years  of 
his  life  to  look  young  —  to  look  as  he  had 
looked  when  Richarda  first  saw  him,  twenty 
years  before. 

He  was  afraid;  yet  he  was  hoping — -he 
hardly  knew  for  what. 

He  set  his  door  a- jar;  he  was  listening  now 
for  her  step  as  she  came  towards  the  stairs ;  he 
knew  her  well  enough  to  count  on  the  pride  which 
would  enable  her  to  play  her  part  without  flinch- 
ing before  Dick  and  her  household. 

He  waited,  until  waiting  became  torture.  He 
craved  nothing  now ;  he  only  wanted  to  see  her ; 
he  only  wanted  — 

Her  door  opened ;  his  courage  failed.  But  in 
that  instant  the  thought  came  to  him,  that  he 
needed  none  —  to  go  to  Charda.  His  shame, 
his  misery  —  but  she  was  there,  passing  his  open 
door. 

"  Charda !  "  he  cried.     And  said  no  more. 

She  turned,  and  looked  at  him.  And  with  the 
divine  intuition  of  love,  she  understood  all  that 
he  would  say  and  could  not. 

She  held  out  her  hand  to  him. 


415 


CHAPTER  XXII 

"  Jack  — "  Richarda  knelt  beside  his  chair  — 
"  Jack  — "  but  she  stopped  again. 

"What  is  it?"  he  asked  in  quick  alarm. 
"Hutchinson?" 

"  No." 

But  her  hands  were  trembling ;  he  remembered 
what  he  had  heard  in  the  night. 

"  Lady !  "  he  entreated,  afraid  of  he  knew  not 
what. 

She  looked  at  him  bravely :  "  I  have  rome- 
thing  to  tell  you."  She  straightened  the  pillows 
in  his  chair.  "  Something  that  concerns  us  all." 

"Us?" 

"  All  of  us,  Jack.     All  of  us  in  this  home." 

She  felt  the  chill  in  his  eyes.  "  You  don't 
understand,"  she  said  hurriedly.  "  You  think 
it  doesn't  really  concern  you.  But  it  does  — 
perhaps  most  of  all." 

"  Then  it's  something  nobody  would  want  to 
hear,"  he  answered  moodily.  "  Everything  is 
that  concerns  me." 

She  sighed ;  there  was  a  quiver  to  her  lips  that 
416 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

he  must  not  see ;  she  began  to  speak  quickly. 
"  It's  hard,  Jack  —  I'm  afraid  I  shan't  tell  it 
right.  But  no  one  else  can  tell  you.  I  must." 

"Lady  — what  is  it?" 

"  Yes  —  I  seem  so  slow.  I  don't  know  how 
— "  her  voice  failed  for  a  moment.  "  Jack  — 
you  remember  —  I  would  not  —  I  said  I  could 
not  —  tell  you  what  you  wanted  to  know  —  you 
remember  — " 

With  a  deep  exclamation  he  sat  straight  — 
his  eyes  demanding  the  words  silent  on  her  lips. 

"  I  will.  I'm  going  to  tell  you  now."  Yet 
she  waited. 

"Lady!" 

"  Jack  — "  she  took  his  hands  in  hers  — "  you 
belong  here.  It  is  to  tell  you  that  this  is  your 
home  — " 

"My  home?" 

If  she  had  ever  deluded  herself  with  the  hope 
that  he  regarded  it  as  such,  his  tone  T\ould  have 
disabused  her. 

"  As  much  yours  as  mine,  Jack.  Oh  more ! 
Your  right  to  it  came  before  mine  did." 

"  My  right  —  before  yours  ?  " 

"  And  before  Dick's."  She  looked  at  him 
with  an  expression  that  only  added  to  his  bewil- 
derment. 

417 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

"Before  Dick's?" 

"  Oh,  don't  you  understand?  Jack,  if  you 
belonged  here  first  —  before  me,  before  Dick  — 
don't  you  see  that  it  was  because  — "  she  waited ; 
he  must  help  her. 

But  he  said  nothing. 

Her  colour  rose;  she  looked  at  him  steadily. 
"  It  was  because  you  were  my  husband's  son," 
she  said  with  simplicity. 

There  was  a  pause.  Then  Jack  was  on  his 
feet ;  he  was  weak  no  more ;  for  a  moment  he  and 
Richarda  looked  at  each  other  with  still  faces. 

"I?  —  his  son?" 

"  Sit  down,"  said  Richarda. 

But  he  remained  standing. 

"  Jack  — "  she  laid  a  determined  hand  on  his 
arm  — "  You  are  not  to  say  what  you  are  think- 
ing. You  are  here  —  in  your  father's  house  — 
where  you  belong  —  where  he  wishes  you  to 
be." 

"  Since  when  ?  "  The  question  came  with 
bitter  force. 

"  Since  he  knew." 

"  Since  he  knew?  " 

"  That  you  were  his  son." 

Jack  shivered ;  he  turned  whiter ;  with  a  quiet 
touch  Richarda  set  him  back  in  his  chair.  She 
418 


chafed  his  hands  until  a  faint  colour  came  into 
his  face ;  she  remembered  that  only  a  few  days 
before  he  had  been  near  death.  Then  she  said 
gently :  "  This  is  a  great  shock  for  you.  I 
know  that." 

"  But  I  don't  understand  —  I  can't.  I  don't 
see  how  it  can  be.  Once  —  you  remember  —  I 
thought  — "  but  he  stopped. 

"  Yes,  I  know." 

"  And  you  knew  this  then?  " 

"  Yes." 

"  And  —  he  —  did  not,  until  last  night?  " 

"  No." 

"Why?" 

Her  eyes  filled  with  tears.  "  That  is  between 
my  husband  and  me." 

"  But  I  must  understand.  How  did  I  come 
here  ?  And  it  is  not  only  the  question  of  —  my 
father.  There  was  a  woman." 

Richarda  shrank.  His  mother !  —  and  he 
spoke  like  that.  And  there  was  nothing  to  tell 
him  that  would  change  that  tone. 

But  Jack  was  remembering  Betty  —  his 
thoughts  were  bitter. 

"  Your  mother  —  yes."  Richarda  spoke 
slowly.  "  She  was  very  young,  Jack." 

"  I  daresay,"  he  said  brusquely.  "  But  you 
419 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

say  —  he  did  not  know.     Then  how  did  I  come 
here?  " 

"  Just  by  an  accident.  Your  mother  did  not 
know  where  —  your  father  was,  but  she  got  a 
position  here,  and  when  she  wanted  to  marry  — 

"  I  see." 

"  You  are  unjust  to  her.  She  had  seen  your 
father  by  chance,  and  the  thought  came  to  her 
that  in  his  home,  where  you  belonged,  you  would 
have  advantages  that  she  could  never  give  you. 
She  found  out  about  me,  and  she  believed  that  I 
would  think,  as  she  did,  that  it  was  your  right 
to  grow  up  in  your  father's  house." 

"  Then  it  was  true  —  what  I  remembered. 
And  that  woman  —  who  brought  me  here  — "  a 
deep  flush  showed  suddenly  red  in  his  white 
face. 

"  Jack !  —  don't  speak  of  your  mother  like 
that.  I  can't  bear  it." 

Richarda's  voice  was  sharp ;  a  feeling  of  pro- 
tective tenderness  for  the  girl  who  had  suffered 
through  her  child,  and  who  had  perhaps  held 
herself  true  to  silence  all  these  years  for  his 
sake,  welled  up  in  her  heart.  It  seemed  a  cruel 
over-doing  of  retribution  that  his  thoughts  of 
her  were  always  to  be  stained  with  shame. 

"  What  was  she  to  me?  She  didn't  want  me, 
and  I  don't  want  her." 

420 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

He  was  trembling  with  anger  and  weakness, 
and  with  humiliation  in  the  shame  that  was  his 
parents'.  Richarda  longed  to  comfort  him,  but 
he  was  in  no  mood  for  that. 

"  She  brought  me  here,  then,"  he  went  on 
doggedly.  "  And  you  took  me,  Lady?  " 

"  What  else  could  I  do?  " 

He  turned  his  head  away ;  he  could  not  let  her 
see  the  tears  with  which  he  remembered  all  that 
she  had  been  to  him  —  mother,  home  —  every- 
thing. 

But  there  was  more  to  say  —  he  steadied  him- 
self. 

"  You  took  me,  and  you  never  told  —  him  ?  " 

—  the  word  was  hard  to  say.     "  And  you  kept 
me,  even  though  — " 

"  Jack,  there's  so  much  I  can't  explain.  In 
time  you  will  understand.  I  thought  I  was  do- 
ing right,  but  I  think  I  did  all  wrong." 

He  began  to  remember  —  other  things,  and  in 
a  moment  he  was  in  a  flame.  "  Yes  —  for  me 

—  all  wrong.      Can't  you  understand  the  shame 
of  not  knowing  who  you  are  —  of  feeling  your- 
self always  under  suspicion  —  an  object  of  char- 
ity —  a   cause   of  bitterness.      Don't    you     see 
how  that  — " 

Richarda  got  up.     "  Jack,  I  can't  bear  it," 
421 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

she  said  breathlessly.  "  I  do  know  —  I  do  un- 
derstand. But  I  did  not  until  it  was  too  late. 
And  because  I  understood  —  last  night  — "  but 
she  began  to  sob  —  those  sharp,  dry  sobs  which 
he  had  heard,  appalled,  in  the  long  hours,  when 
he  law  awake  tortured  by  the  thought  of  Hutch- 
inson. 

"Oh  Lady,  I'm  a  brute,"  he  cried.  "But 
don't  leave  me.  It's  all  so  strange.  I'm  glad 
—  and  I'm  sorry.  I  feel  better  —  and  worse." 
He  smiled  with  a  wan  touch  of  his  old  gaiety. 

She  looked  at  him  with  tears ;  and  as  she  had 
held  out  her  hand  to  her  husband,  she  now  held 
it  out  to  him. 

He  took  it  between  his  own;  there  was  that 
in  his  eyes  which  her  heart  was  never  to  forget. 

It  was  after  a  long  silence  that  she  said  softly, 
but  quickly,  with  a  little  catch  in  the  words: 
"Jack  —  he  wants  to  see  you.  That  was  what 
I  came  to  tell  you." 

The  colour  flared  into  Jack's  face;  he  lifted 
his  shoulders  with  a  gesture  that  was  all  of 
Homfrey. 

She  bent  over  him.  "  Jack,  be  good  to  me. 
It  is  my  boy,  remember,  who  is  to  meet  his 
father." 

And  then  she  went  swiftly  out  of  the  room. 
422 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

Jack's  head  dropped  back  against  the  pil- 
lows ;  he  felt  in  himself  no  strength  left  for  what 
was  coming. 

Homf rey  —  his  father !  He  repeated  that  — 
he  listened  to  the  sound  of  the  words  on  his  lips. 
And  with  the  sound  there  seemed  to  awaken  in 
him  a  sense  of  himself  as  another  man.  He  was 
Homfrey  —  Jack  Homf  rey  —  with  a  right  to 
his  name  which  inhered  through  no  act  of  benefi- 
cence, but  through  the  blood  which  ran  in  his 
veins. 

The  door  opened ;  his  heart  gave  a  leap ;  he 
rose  dizzily  to  his  feet,  but  he  could  not  look  up. 

Then  he  heard  Lady's  voice  — "  Jack !  " —  it 
was  very  still,  and  very  far,  as  though  it  came 
from  a  great  height;  he  felt  her  hand  steady 
under  his  arm. 

And  then  he  looked  up  —  and  saw  the  face 
of  his  father. 


423 


CHAPTER  XXIII 

"Dick!" 

But  Dick  did  not  hear ;  he  was  whistling  busily 
in  the  hall,  his  thoughts  intent  upon  the  baseball 
game  for  which  he  was  bound. 

"Dick!" 

"  Hullo !  " —  the  boy  looked  up  to  see  his 
father  in  the  doorway  of  the  library.  "  Want 
to  go  with  me?  " 

His  eyes  twinkled ;  he  was  conscious  of  a  mag- 
nanimous pity  for  the  paternal  obstinacy  which 
insisted  upon  ignoring  the  fascinations  of  "  dia- 
mond "  and  "  gridiron." 

"  No.  I  want  to  speak  to  you,"  said  Hom- 
frey  slowly. 

"  What  in  thunder's  the  matter  now  ? " 
thought  Dick  impatiently;  he  followed  his 
father  into  the  library,  looking  aggressively  at 
his  watch  meanwhile. 

Homfrey  sat  down;  Dick  remained  standing. 

His  eyes  narrowed  as  he  looked  at  his  father ;  he 

was  passionately  proud  of  being  his  father's  son, 

but  that  did  not  prevent  his  considering  Hom- 

424 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

frej,  at  times,  a  most  puzzling  parent.  His 
mother  —  she  would  have  known  that  there  was 
nothing  she  might  want  to  say  which  could  not 
wait  until  after  the  game.  But  fathers  took 
themselves  seriously. 

Dick  shuffled  his  feet  annoyingly,  with  mani- 
fest intention,  but  even  that  did  not  make  Hom- 
frey  look  up.  He  was  drawing,  with  infinite 
care,  a  series  of  waving  lines  upon  a  blotter. 
But  at  last  he  spoke. 

"  There  is  something  I  have  to  tell  you, 
Dick." 

His  voice,  which  was  very  quiet,  struck  Dick 
as  calculatingly  severe. 

"  Now  Father,  if  old  Butler's  been  complain- 
ing to  you  again  about  my  Latin,  I  just  want 
to  say — " 

"  He  has  not." 

Dick  muttered  something  under  his  breath, 
then  as  a  sudden  idea  occurred  to  him,  he  said 
anxiously :  "  You  aren't  sick,  are  you  ?  " 

"  No." 

"  Well,  /  believe  you  are.  You  look  sick, 
Father." 

"  But  I'm  not  —  what  you  would  call  sick,  my 
boy."  The  words  dragged. 

"  Then  what  is  it?  "  Dick  inquired  briskly. 
425 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

"  Is  it  anything  about  business  ?     You  weren't 
in  the  Jardine  affair." 

"  What  do  you  know  about  the  Jardine  af- 
fair? " 

Even  in  his  wretchedness,  Homfrey  felt  the 
humor  of  his  son's  large-handed  grasp  of  him 
as  a  person  to  be  dealt  with  in  a  composed,  prac- 
tical way. 

"  I  know  all  about  it,"  said  Dick  promptly. 
"  Ben  Marsden's  father  dropped  thirty  thousand 
dollars  in  that  hole." 

"Poor  Marsden!" 

"  He  was  a  fool,"  retorted  Dick  calmly. 

"  I  hope  to  God  you  may  never  be  a  less 
worthy  one,  Dick." 

Homfrey  stood  up;  he  looked  straight  at  his 
son.  "  My  boy,  if  I  had  to-day  against  my 
account  only  what  poor  Marsden  has  — "  he 
paused;  he  felt  the  sweat  suddenly  hot  in  his 
closed  palms  —  he  could  not  go  on. 

"Well?" 

There  was  forbearance  in  the  simple  word, 
but  Homfrey  understood  that  Dick  was  sud- 
denly alarmed  —  that  the  boy  feared  a  blow 
from  some  source  unknown  to  him. 

"  It  is  nothing  that  will  hurt  you,  Dick.  Yes, 
it  will.  I  mean  —  but  not  in  the  way  you  think 
perhaps.  I  must — " 

426 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

"I  am  not  afraid  of  being  hurt,"  said  Dick 
coldly.  He  had  a  confused  sense  of  acute  dis- 
comfort —  his  father  seemed  to  be  trifling  with 
him  in  a  vague,  hysterical  way  that  impressed 
him  as  a  humiliation  to  them  both. 

"  I  know  you're  not.  You're  like  your  mother 
in  that.  But  —  /  am  afraid  of  being  hurt, 
Dick." 

"  You ! " 

There  was  such  tribute  in  the  exclamation 
that  Homfrey's  broken  spirit  instinctively  ral- 
lied. 

"  It  doesn't  matter.  I  have  got  to  be  hurt 
—  the  thing  I  must  tell  you  —  concerns  Jack." 

"Jack?" 

Stolid  as  he  appeared  to  be,  Dick  apprehended 
sharply  that  he  had  never  heard  his  father  say 
that  name  in  this  tone. 

"  What  I  have  to  tell  you,"  said  Homfrey  in 
a  voice  which  shrank  — "  is  that  Jack  —  after 
to-day  —  will  be  in  a  different  —  you  see  — 
can't  you  understand  ?  —  has  it  never  occurred 
to  you  ?  —  don't  you  see  that  Jack  — " 

But  there  Homfrey  stopped.  Richarda  had 
been  right.  He  had  to  tell  Dick  this  thing,  but 
he  would  tell  it  all  wrong. 

Was  there  any  way  to  tell  it  right? 
427 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

Then  Dick  said :  "  I  would  rather  know  at 
once,  Father." 

But  for  a  moment  yet  Homfrey  waited;  he 
knew  that  with  his  next  breath  he  was  going  to 
lose  that  for  which  he  cared  above  everything 
else  in  the  world. 

He  turned  to  Dick. 

"  Jack,  too,  is  my  son,"  he  said. 

Dick  looked  at  his  father,  but  in  his  mind 
there  was  no  more  immediate  appreciation  of  the 
case  than  a  touch  of  resentment  that  Homfrey, 
like  a  juggler  with  coloured  balls,  should  choose 
to  toss  lightly  into  the  air,  words  which  were 
fanciful  and  meaningless. 

"  You  mean  that  you're  going  to  adopt 
Jack?" 

The  idea  was  amusing;  Dick  laughed. 

"  No." 

"  Then  I  don't  understand." 

Dick  was  suddenly  resentful ;  he  was  tired  of 
this. 

"  Jack  is  my  son." 

Dick  stepped  back;  his  face  grew  slowly  red 
—  as  his  father's  grew  white. 

"  I  don't  understand,"  he  said  again  —  but 
this  time  with  curious  dignity. 

"  But  you  must ! "  exclaimed  Homfrey  with 
428 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

unconscious  sharpness.  "  Jack  is  my  son  —  as 
much  as  you  are.  He  was  born  —  before  I  mar- 
ried your  mother.  But  I  didn't  even  know  that 
until  yesterday.  I  knew  nothing.  But  your 
mother  did.." 

"Mother!" 

Homfrey's  face  flamed.  He  had  known  that 
he  must  drink  the  uttermost  dreg  of  shame,  but 
he  had  not  imagined  it  as  bitter  as  this.  He 
stood  before  his  child  as  the  criminal  before  his 
judge,  but  he  would  never  know  the  sentence 
pronounced  upon  him. 

"  Your  mother,  yes,"  he  faltered,  though 
without  intention  of  speaking  — "  Jack  was 
brought  to  her  —  by  his  mother." 

Dick's  eyes  flashed  upon  his  father's  face. 
Then  reaching  for  the  cap  which  had  fallen  from 
his  hand,  he  said  with  laborious  indifference: 
"  Well,  I  guess  I'll  be  going." 

"  Dick ! " 

But  the  boy  did  not  look  back ;  the  door  closed 
behind  him,  and  Homfrey  was  left  to  himself 
and  to  a  bitter  hour. 

Dick  walked  slowly  up  the  stairs;  he  might 
as  well  go  back  to  his  room  and  work  on  his  Ger- 
man for  a  while.  The  house  was  drearily  quiet 
—  it  seemed  as  if  everybody  had  gone  out  of  it. 
429 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

As  he  came  to  the  door  of  Jack's  room,  he  saw 
that  it  was  a- jar  —  he  passed  it  with  a  heart 
that  beat  suddenly  like  a  drum  —  his  face 
was  hot  again.  Then  he  paused ;  for  a  few  mo- 
ments he  stood  irresolute;  then  his  lips  set 
squarely.  He  rallied  all  his  pride  and  self-con- 
trol, and  pushing  the  slanted  door  open,  he 
went  in.  He  had  a  dim  feeling  that  no  one 
should  dictate  to  him  the  method  of  his  accept- 
ance of  Jack  as  a  brother.  He  would  forestall 
all  possibility  of  that. 

"Hullo  Jack!     Feeling  better  to-day?" 

Jack's  face  lightened.  "  Oh  Dick,  I'm  awfully 
glad  to  see  you,"  he  said  simply. 

They  chatted  over  intimate  trifles  for  a  few 
minutes;  then  with  a  little  touch  of  embarrass- 
ment in  his  manner,  Dick  jumped  up. 

"  I  must  get  back  to  my  German." 

With  a  nod  he  was  gone. 

When  he  reached  his  own  room,  he  shut  the 
door  unhurriedly,  but  he  had  hardly  done  so 
when  he  broke  into  a  sob  that  was  strangely  ter- 
rifying to  him.  For  he  had  always  been  happy. 

Long  afterwards  he  heard  a  faint  knock  at 
his  door.  After  some  moments  he  opened  it; 
his  mother  stood  there. 

"  It's  dinner-time,  Dick."  She  did  not  look 
430 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

at   him.      "  And    I'm    not   ready.       I     couldn't 
fasten  this  hook.     Can  you  do  it  for  me?  " 

There  was  a  silence ;  then  Dick  said  irritably : 
"  I  can't  do  it,  Mother." 

"  It  doesn't  matter.      Come  along." 

But  then,  though  each  sought  evasion,  the 
glances  of  mother  and  son  met  full. 

"  Oh  Dick,  you  mustn't  —  you  mustn't.  Not 
like  that." 

"  I  mustn't? "  the  boy  fired  upon  her. 
"  Didn't  you  care,  Mother?  " 

"  But  that  was  different,"  she  retorted  with  a 
half-sob.  "Your  father— " 

"  My  father!  " 

She  looked  at  him  as  he  had  never  known  his 
mother  could  look.  Then  she  repeated  with  a 
passionate  tenderness  that  seemed  to  set  the  sim- 
ple words  apart  from  all  that  might  wound  them : 
"Your  father?  —  Oh  Dick,  you  don't  under- 
stand. You  don't  know." 

"  I  don't  want  to." 

Richarda  was  silent ;  her  own  pain  was  still  so 
deep,  so  unassuaged. 

But  her  bitterness  passed;  she  recovered  her 
courage. 

"  And  I  do  not  want  to,  Dick." 

The  boy  swung  away  from  her  —  then  turned 
back.     "  Mother,  would  you  like  — " 
431 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

"  Dick  —  tell  me  —  do  you  know  —  anywhere 
• — to-day  —  a  better  man  than  your  father?" 

The  tears  he  had  manfully  kept  back,  shone 
suddenly  in  Dick's  eyes.  "  But  that's  it, 
Mother.  That's  it.  I  don't  understand."  He 
looked  at  her,  bewildered.  "  Oh  Mother,  don't 
cry!" 

"  I  must,"  she  whispered  brokenly.  "  Every- 
thing hurts  so.  /  don't  understand,  and  your 
father  doesn't.  It  was  all  wrong.  But  he 
wants  to  make  it  right,  and  you  and  I  must 
help  him.  And  Dick  —  there  are  not  many 
men  noble  enough  to  do  what  I  know  your  father 
will  do  about  Jack." 

"  I  see,"  said  the  boy  slowly.  "  But  Mother, 
you're  crying  again." 

Richarda  smiled.  "  Perhaps  that's  because  I 
haven't  any  longer  anything  to  cry  about." 

But  Dick  shook  his  head,  unconvinced. 

"  Nothing  will  ever  be  the  same  again,"  he 
said  drearily. 

"  But  Dick,  this  always  has  been.  It  is  only 
that  you  haven't  known  it.  I  have.  And  I 
have  been  so  afraid  of  it.  And  now  I  shall 
never  be  afraid  again."  She  clasped  his  hand 
hard  in  a  sudden  outbreak  of  emotion.  "  Oh 
Dick,  my  Dick,  be  glad  for  me,  that  I  shall 
never  be  afraid  again." 
432 


CHAPTER  XXIV 

"  The  thing  is  impossible,"  said  Homfrey. 

Jack  shook  his  head;  he  looked  towards  Ri- 
charda  for  understanding. 

"  If  it  were  any  other  man  but  old  Hutch. 
But  he's  different.  And  if  you  knew  Betty, 
you  would  know  that  there  is  no  long  life  of 
happiness  with  her  before  Bill.  There  can't  be. 
It's  not  in  her  nature  that  there  should  be.  It 
would  not  be  an  easy  position  for  any  woman  — 
to  be  the  wife  of  a  man  like  Hutchinson,  but  for 
Betty  it  will  become  impossible.  By  this  time 
she  will  have  grown  used  to  his  wealth  and  his 
position  —  she  will  think  of  those  things  as  hers 

—  she  will  have  exhausted   all  the  novelty. — 
But  outside  all  this  argument  there  is  Hutch- 
himself.     He  believes  in  the  truth  at  any  cost 

—  we've  spent  hours  arguing  about  that.     And 
he  knows  that  I  know  him  better  than  anyone 
else  does  —  that  I  could  never  make  the  excuse 
that  I  had  not  understood  what  he  would  expect 
of  me.     Besides,  he  is  no  coward.     He  is  the 
bravest  man  I  know." 

433 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

"  And  still  — " 

Jack  cut  Homfrey  short.  "  There  is  always 
Betty.  You  see,  she  is  apt,  sometime  or  other, 
to  tell  Hutch  herself.  In  fact,  I  think  she  is 
sure  to.  And  if  she  ever  does  tell  him,  she  will 
do  it  in  the  cruellest  way." 

"  Well,  you  seem  to  think  you  understand  the 
case  all  round,"  said  Homfrey.  "  And  I  sup- 
pose you  may  be  right,  but  I  can  not  see  it  so." 

"  I  am  right."  Jack  spoke  with  decision. 
"  I  have  done  as  you  asked.  But  my  year  in 
Berlin,  away  from  all  the  circumstances,  has  not 
made  me  feel  differently.  I  have  learnt  to  look 
at  the  matter  dispassionately  —  that  is  all.  Of 
course  this  whole  question  of  marriage  is  so 
overlaid  with  sentiment  and  tradition  that  it  is 
hard  to  do  that.  Yet  Bill's  case  is  simple 
enough.  He  has  made  the  kind  of  mistake  that, 
for  a  man  like  him,  is  intolerable.  There  is 
then,  only  one  thing  for  him  to  do  —  that  is,  to 
rectify  it.  The  situation  is  an  impossible  one 
for  him  —  it  could  not  be  permanent."  He 
thought  a  moment;  then  he  added  with  a  long 
breath :  "  Ah,  if  Betty  were  different  —  if  I 
knew  that  she  could  make  Hutch  happy,  then  I 
should  have  a  problem  on  my  hands  that  would 
be  bitter  enough.  For  I  should  still  feel  that 
434 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

Hutch  himself  would  rather  know  the  truth  and 
suffer,  than  be  happy .  and  deceived.  And  in 
that  case,  the  worst  of  the  misery  would  fall,  not 
upon  him,  but  upon  the  woman." 

"  Still  —  you  do  not  know,"  said  Richarda. 
"  Perhaps  Betty,  by  this  time  —  aren't  you 
pretty  hard  on  her,  Jack?  " 

"  No,"  retorted  Jack  with  sudden  fierceness. 
"  I  can  never  forgive  her  for  marrying  Bill. 
She  knew,  as  well  as  anyone,  what  he  wanted  in 
his  wife.  She  never  loved  him  —  she  took  him 
to  use  him.  You  must  remember  that  you  do 
not  know  Betty." 

"No,"  said  Richarda  slowly.  "I  don't,  of 
course.  But  —  marriage  is  like  nothing  else, 
Jack." 

She  looked  wistfully  at  the  boy ;  there  were 
many  things  before  him  to  understand.  But 
one  must  wait.  He  was  temporarily  in  a  state 
of  mind  which  was  a  logical  superinduction  of 
his  final  experiences  at  Waverley.  During  his 
year  in  Berlin  he  had  thrown  himself  upon  his 
work  with  a  passion  which  had  yielded  brilliant 
results,  with  the  effect  that  there  was  produced 
in  him  a  curiously  stern  appreciation  of  his  en- 
dowment and  of  his  responsibility  to  it.  The 
boy  had  become  a  man  —  a  man,  for  the  time, 
435 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

of  an  unexpectedly  puritanic  temper.  He  was 
in  that  phase  of  development  which  has  no  pa- 
tience with  the  mistakes  and  the  compromises  of 
life  —  his  own  or  other  people's.  He  had  suf- 
fered for  years  from  the  bitter  consciousness  of 
himself  as  in  an  equivocal  position,  and  Richarda 
suspected  that  in  his  present  state  of  mind  there 
were  moments  when  his  judgment  of  her  was 
severe  —  when  he  would  have  said  that  she  had 
created  an  intolerable  situation,  and  suffering 
for  everyone  concerned  out  of  a  matter  which 
was  simplicity  itself;  which,  honestly  faced  and 
denuded  of  sentimental  sophistry,  might  have 
been  adjusted  to  the  general  good  with  a  mini- 
mum of  emotion. 

But  Richarda  was  a  patient  woman.  She 
did  not  resent  a  possible  attitude  of  this  sort  on 
Jack's  part;  it  seemed  to  her  a  reasonable  con- 
comitant of  his  youth  —  of  his  inexperience  in 
the  most  mysterious  of  all  paradoxes,  the  human 
heart.  She  could  wait  for  his  understanding  of 
her  weakness. 

Besides,  she  had  Homfrey.  The  reproaches 
which  she  had  expected  from  him  had  never  been 
uttered;  in  his  great  humiliation  there  was  no 
room  for  criticism  of  the  injustice  to  him  of  her 
long  silence,  for  he  recognised  that  she  had  been 
436 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

obedient  unto  the  heavenly  vision  as  it  had  been 
granted  to  her;  her  eyes  had  been  towards  the 
light,  and  when  the  greater  revelation  was 
vouchsafed  to  her,  she  had  responded  to  it  with 
the  greater  renunciation. 

Richarda  had  feared  the  destruction  between 
them  of  all  that  she  held  most  dear  in  her  mar- 
riage; she  understood  now  that  the  bond  that 
held  them  to  each  other  had  undergone,  in  their 
mutual  sorrow,  a  sacramental  regeneration  which 
lifted  it  above  all  menace. 

She  had  asked  that  she  might  see  of  the  tra- 
vail of  her  soul  and  he  satisfied ;  with  the  awe  of 
a  great  deliverance  upon  her,  she  believed  that 
her  prayer  had  touched  the  heart  of  God,  and 
had  been  answered,  though  not  as  she  had  willed. 

"  How  long  was  Dr.  Maxwell  in  Berlin  with 
you  ?  "  she  asked  when  the  discussion  with  regard 
to  Hutchinson  had  dropped. 

"  About  three  months.  He's  now  in  Scot- 
land." Jack  ruminated.  "  He's  a  good  deal 
changed.  He's  seen  his  wife,  you  know." 

"  He  has  seen  her?  " 

"  Yes.    'Tisn't  a  reconciliation.    I  don't  mean 

that.     It  never  will  be.     But  Maxwell  seems  to 

have  lost  his  bitterness.     Seeing  her  must  have 

done  something  for  him,  but  I  have  never  under- 

437 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

stood  what.  He's  so  much  more  human.  He 
makes  an  effort  to  be  kindly  in  an  ordinary,  sim- 
ple way.  When  he  knows  that  I  have  had  a 
letter  from  you,  he  will  ask  about  you  —  you'd 
think  he  was  really  interested.  That's  the  kind 
of  difference.  It  shows  in  little  ways." 

"  I  see,"  said  Richarda  absently. 

"  He'll  do  great  things  yet,"  added  Jack  — 
"  If  he  lives." 

"  Why  do  you  say,  if  he  lives  ?  " 

Jack  looked  disturbed.  "  I  don't  know.  It 
haunts  me  —  the  feeling  that  he  won't  —  that 
just  as  he  gets  to  the  place  where  he  can  do  what 
counts,  he  will  be  called.  I  can't  get  rid  of  the 
sense  of  tragedy  when  I  think  of  him.  It's 
bound  up  with  my  idea  of  him.  And  I  think  he 
feels  it  himself.  And  the  odd  thing  is  that  he 
would  not  rebel.  I  know  what  his  interpreta- 
tion would  be.  It  would  be,  that  the  final 
thwarting  of  his  desires  represented  the  perfect 
rounding  out  of  a  life  like  his  —  that  for  him 
the  imperfect  was  the  perfect." 

"  I  like  that,"  said  Richarda. 

"  I  daresay.  But  it's  an  unnatural  point  of 
view.  It's  what  a  man's  driven  to,  not  what  he 
chooses." 

"  My  dear  boy  — "  Richarda  laid  her  hand  on 
438 


Jack's  shoulder  — "  Some  day  you  may  feel  that 
the  things  we  are  ultimately  driven  to,  are  apt  to 
be  the  great  things  —  the  ends  to  which  all  our 
lives  have  moved." 

"  Perhaps,  Lady  —  perhaps." 

"  Hutch  writes  that  he  does  not  want  to  come 
into  town  to  see  me,"  said  Jack  to  Richarda  a 
few  days  later.  "  So  I  shall  go  out  there.  I 
shall  ask  him  to  meet  me  at  the  hotel  —  I  cannot 
go  to  his  house,  of  course.  There  is  something 
in  his  letter  that  I  do  not  get  at." 

"  Don't  go,"  pleaded  Richarda. 

But  Jack's  mouth  was  set.  "  It's  no  use, 
Lady.  It's  *  laid  upon  me  '  as  the  saints  would 
say.  It's  something  old  Hutch  and  I  have  to 
go  through  together.  I  see  no  escape  for  either 
of  us.  I  was  a  fool,  and  so  was  he,  and  we  have 
to  pay  for  it.  As  I've  said  to  you  so  often,  if 
Hutch  were  any  other  man  but  just  Hutch,  it 
would  be  different.  But  he's  not,  and  the  thing 
has  to  be  done. —  All  the  same,"  he  added  with 
an  unhappy  smile  — "  I've  lain  awake  all  night 
over  it.  I  ought  to  have  told  him  sooner. 
That's  my  greatest  misery  now.  But  you  know 
how  you  put  it  to  me.  You  insisted  on  the 


year." 


439 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

"  I  wish  I  could  do  it  again,"  said  Richarda. 

Jack  shook  his  head  absently.  "  And  now 
this  letter  of  Bill's  adds  to  my  perplexity. 
Something's  happened.  He  doesn't  mention  his 
wife.  There's  something  in  it  that  makes  me 
feel  as  if  he  were  a  thousand  miles  away  from 
me." 

"  Perhaps  he  knows,"  suggested  Richarda. 

"  Perhaps.     It  looks  a  little  like  that  to  me." 

"  Or  perhaps  — "  but  Richarda  went  no  fur- 
ther. 

She  waited  through  a  long  day  in  great 
anxiety  for  Jack's  return ;  when  Homf rey  came 
home  to  dinner  he  was  disturbed  at  finding  her 
so  wan  and  nervous.  He  tried  to  divert  her,  and 
she  responded  to  his  efforts  patiently,  but  it  was 
a  dreary  evening  for  them  both.  When  it  grew 
near  midnight,  she  begged  him  to  go  up- 
stairs. 

"  I  would  rather  be  alone  when  he  comes." 

"  And  he  would  rather  find  you  alone,"  said 
Homfrey.  "  He  will  always  be  more  your  boy 
than  mine,  Richarda." 

She  looked  up  at  him.  "  You  have  told  me 
that  I  earned  him,"  she  answered  defensively. 

"Yes,  you  earned  him."  The  expression. 
440 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

came  into  Homfrey's  eyes  that  always  made  the 
tears  feel  near  her  own. 

It  was  one  o'clock  before  she  heard  the  latch- 
key in  the  door  —  she  had  gone  up-stairs  mean- 
ing to  put  on  a  dressing-gown  with  the  idea  of 
lying  down  on  the  couch  in  the  library  until  he 
came.  Then  she  heard  his  quick  light  step  and 
the  rattle  of  the  key,  and  she  ran  to  the  head  of 
the  stairs.  And  when  Jack  came  in,  he  looked 
up,  and  saw  her  coming  down,  as  he  had  seen 
her  on  that  summer  morning  when  he  had  come 
back  to  her,  ill  and  broken  in  mind  and  in  body. 
He  stood  and  looked  at  her  silently  as  she  hur- 
ried to  him  in  her  gentle  eager  way  —  he  was 
thinking  with  a  rush  of  emotion  that  over- 
whelmed him,  that  she  had  never  failed  him  when 
she  knew  he  needed  her  —  that  she  was,  and 
always  would  be  the  dominating  influence  in  his 
life  —  that  living  or  dead,  her  conscience  would 
always  be  for  his  the  final  court  of  appeal. 

"  Jack ! "  she  said  in  the  lightest  voice. 

"  Oh  Lady !  — "  he  took  her  hands  in  his  and 
held  them  for  a  moment  without  speaking  — 
she  saw  that  he  could  not.  Something  had  hap- 
pened since  she  said  good-bye  to  him  that  morn- 
ing. 

She  waited ;  then  she  said  quietly :  "  We'll 
441 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

go  into  the  library,"  and  he  followed  her,  taking 
off  his  coat  as  he  went. 

"  You're  so  tired,"  he  protested  at  last. 

She  made  a  gesture. 

Then  he  began  to  talk.  "  It's  all  so  different 
from  what  we  thought,  Lady." 

"  Then  you  haven't  told  him." 

"  No.     I  haven't  told  him." 

"  Oh,  I'm  so  glad."  The  tears  came  into 
Richarda's  eyes. 

"  You  see,  when  I  got  there  — "  Jack  went  on 
in  the  same  slow  way  — "  Bill  met  me  and  we 
had  luncheon  together  at  the  hotel.  It  was  a 
shock  to  me  —  the  moment  I  saw  him  —  the  way 
he  had  altered.  The  tone  of  his  voice  was  dif- 
ferent —  I  noticed  that  with  his  first  word,  and 
his  hair  has  begun  to  get  gray.  He  wanted  to 
hear  all  about  my  affairs,  and  was  so  interested 
to  know  that  I  was  going  abroad  again.  After 
a  while  he  told  me  that  he  had  resigned  his  posi- 
tion at  Waverley  a  year  ago  —  I  understood 
then  that  he  had  not  returned  there  after  his 
marriage.  But  somehow,  I  couldn't  ask  any 
questions.  I  felt  all  the  time  that  I  was  waiting 
for  something,  but  I  couldn't  get  any  clue  as  to 
what.  He  did  not  mention  his  wife  —  I  won- 
dered how  I  ever  should  be  able  to.  I  had 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

thought  it  all  out  so  straight  in  the  train  —  I 
got  out  at  that  station  knowing  just  what  I  had 
to  say.  And  the  longer  I  talked  to  Hutch  the 
further  I  got  away  from  what  I  had  come  there 
to  tell  him.  I  couldn't  understand  why.  Then 
by  degrees  it  came  to  me  that  it  was  because  of 
Hutch  —  that  he  was  holding  me  silent  —  that 
I  was  not  to  speak  his  wife's  name.  That  was 
it,  Lady.  The  longer  we  talked,  the  surer  I 
was  of  it.  And  by  and  by  we  talked  less  and 
less  —  I  said  I  must  get  my  train.  And  as  we 
walked  to  the  station  he  said  there  was  some- 
thing he  must  tell  me  —  that  he  had  a  little 
child  —  a  little  daughter,  born  last  week.  And 
then  I  understood  what  had  happened  to  old 
Hutch.  You  understand,  Lady." 

Richarda  nodded. 

"  And  I  could  only  say  to  him :  *  Oh,  what  a 
wonderful  thing  —  a  little  child.'  That  was  all. 
—  When  the  train  came  in  we  said  good-bye 
with  the  commonplaces  of  strangers.  But  as  it 
moved  out  —  I  was  still  standing  on  the  step  — 
he  turned  quickly  and  looked  up  at  me,  and 
said :  *  O  Hefty  ! ' —  and  then  I  knew,  Lady, 
that  he  knew  all  that  I  could  tell  him." 

Jack  laid  his  head  on  the  table,  and  for  a  few 
moments  there  was  silence  in  the  room.     Then 
he  said  in  a  broken  voice :     "Oh  Hutch !  " 
443 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

Richarda  was  silent. 

At  last  Jack  looked  at  her.  "  Why  did  it 
have  to  happen  to  him,  Lady  ?  " 

"  I've  been  thinking  about  that  all  day,"  she 
answered.  "  And  it  seems  to  me  one  has  to  go  a 
long  way  before  one  understands  —  or  rather,  a 
long  way  before  one  begins  to  understand  any- 
thing at  all  about  it.  After  all,  Jack,  it's  only 
a  man  like  Hutchinson  who  can  be  sacrificed  to 
save  a  woman  like  Betty.  And  he  may  fail. 
But  that  is  not  the  point." 

"He  will  fail.  How  can  he  do  anything  else? 
And  look  at  him  now  —  it  maddens  me  to  think 
of  it!  He  has  been  driven  to  accept  her  as  his 
—  to  protect  her  with  his  honour  and  his  name 
• —  to  save  her  from  a  word,  even  from  me." 

"  It's  wonderful,"  said  Richarda  in  a  hushed 
voice.  "  Don't  you  see  what  it  is,  Jack?  —  It's 
the  working  out  of  the  divinest  law  in  human 
life  —  a  law  without  which  humanity  would  have 
gone  to  destruction  long  before  this.  You  think 
of  the  ruin  of  Hutchinson's  happiness.  That 
idea  of  happiness  is  at  the  root  of  all  our  un- 
happiness.  What  better  can  Hutchinson  have 
than  what  is  before  him?  And  don't  you  think, 
perhaps,  that  it  is  time,  for  the  preservation  of 
his  own  race  —  morally,  I  mean  —  that  there 
444 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

should  come  into  it  a  Betty  and  all  that  Betty 
stands  for?  " 

"Morally?" 

"  Yes  —  morally." 

"  You  go  deep,  Lady." 

"  One  must,  if  one  would  understand.  If  you 
could  have  done  for  Hutchinson  just  what  you 
think  he  deserves,  you  would  have  seen  to  it  that 
he  married  what  you  would  call  a  woman  worthy 
of  him.  And  then,  by  the  time  he  was  fifty,  he 
would  be  stagnant  in  his  own  virtue  and  hers. 
The  truth  is,  that  he  is  so  fine  a  type,  that  only 
Betty  is  really  worthy  of  him." 

"  Lady  !  "  exclaimed  Jack. 

Richarda  held  up  her  hand.  "  And  he  only 
is  worthy  of  Betty.  Listen  to  me,  Jack."  She 
leaned  forward.  "  Why  should  his  family  be 
immune  from  the  great  struggle?  Is  it  enough, 
do  you  think,  that  a  man  like  Hutchinson  should 
give  a  big  contribution  to  his  church  —  to  the 
saving  of  the  souls  of  the  heathen  —  to  the  town 
charities  ?  Is  that  what  lifts  humanity  up  ?  — 
Oh  no !  — "  Richarda  shook  her  head.  "  It's  the 
sweat  of  one  soul  for  another  that  counts.  And 
the  time  had  come  for  that  race  of  Hutchinsons 
to  do  its  work  in  the  world.  And  to  do  that  it 
had  to  bring  the  struggle  into  its  own  blood. — 
445 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

Hutchinson  understands.  He  knew  well,  when 
he  looked  for  the  first  time,  into  the  face  of  his 
child."  Richarda  was  silent  a  moment ;  then  she 
added:  "And  Betty!  —  It's  wonderful.  She 
has  been  gripped  by  something  that  will  never 
let  her  go.  Whatever  she  may  do,  however  she 
may  try  to  escape,  she  will  never  be  able  to  get 
away  from  the  thought  of  Hutchinson." 

"  What  an  insatiable  idealist  you  are,  lady !  " 
exclaimed  Jack. 

Richarda  looked  at  him  with  a  faint  smile. 
"  It's  the  only  way.  You  can't  get  out  of  it,  if 
you  think  at  all  below  the  surface.  You  see,  in 
this  tragedy  of  you  and  Betty  and  Hutchinson 
—  Oh,  further  back  —  in  the  tragedy  of  your 
father  and  your  mother  and  you  —  something 
has  been  working  steadily  towards  an  end  that 
had  a  meaning.  It  will  be  like  that  with  Hutch- 
inson. You  will  see.  The  end  is  assured.  It 
is  so  good  to  remember  sometimes  that  we  cannot 
defeat  it." 

There  was  a  little  pause ;  then  Jack  said :  "  I 
couldn't  have  believed  this  morning  that  I  should 
come  back  to-night  thinking  so  differently  of  so 
many  things.  After  I  left  Hutch  —  it  seems 
to  me  that  for  a  while  I  must  have  thought 
harder  and  faster  than  I  ever  have  in  my  life. 
446 


THE  ROAD  TO  DAMASCUS 

I  understood  what  you  meant  when  you  said 
marriage  was  like  nothing  else.  I  thought  of 
my  own  children  —  as  if  they  were  real.  It 
puts  such  a  different  face  on  it  all  —  when  you 
think  of  it  that  way.  I  wondered  what  I  was 
going  to  hand  on  —  to  my  own  boy." 

"  Not  less  of  some  things,"  said  Richarda. 
"  But  higher  up." 

There  was  a  long  silence  —  a  silence,  which  in 
the  interlacing  of  their  thoughts  seemed  woven 
as  a  single  fabric.  Then  Richarda  said: 

"  It's  late  —  and  Tim  will  want  to  know." 

But  she  stood  for  a  moment  looking  at  Jack ; 
she  was  remembering  him,  as  she  had  first  seen 
him  —  a  frightened  deserted  child.  Yet  he  had 
become  the  measure  whereby  much  had  been 
meted. 

"  Good-night,  Jack,"  she  said  quietly. 

"  Good-night,  Lady." 


447 


A     000  11 1  052     7 


